26 Apr 2013

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Housing horrors in Kuwait?

See Page 8

Local FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2013

Kuwait’s my business

Credible Kuwait bloggers make life more satisfying

By John P Hayes

local@kuwaittimes.net

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redibility. Blogger. Combining the two words produces a person who has the power to influence beliefs and actions. For example, commercial bloggers (as opposed to hobbyists) write, “Gadget A is better than Gadget B” and “Buy these brownies - they’re yummy!”

Consumers believe the bloggers, until they lose credibility. Loss of credibility doesn’t mean the bloggers lose their audience, but they do lose the power to influence, and some lose respect. Every year my students study the Kuwait blogosphere, and every year they bemoan blogger credibility.

“Bloggers just want money,” a group of students reported. “They’re not interested in serving the readers.”

KD 400 to post!

Once the readers turn on a blogger, advertisers are not far behind. In response to my previous columns about Kuwait blogging, a Kuwaiti businessman told me about his distasteful experience with a blogger. “We invited him to our business and afterwards he told us he would post an article for KD 400. That didn’t feel honest to us. If we wanted to buy an advertisement we would have done so. We didn’t want to pay him just to say good things about our business.”

Some savvy bloggers have figured out how to get the best of all worlds: serve the readers, earn money, and keep credibility and respect. To wit, Heather Armstrong was a young and financially struggling Salt Lake City mom when she started writing about her kids, her husband, her pets, her depression, her liberal views, etc., in a blog called Dooce.com (for which she was eventually fired from her full-time job). Today her site nets nearly 1-million monthly visitors, and she earns more than $50,000 a month. At one point she was the only female blogger on Forbes’ list of the Most Influential Women in Media. Does she write about gadgets and brownies? Sometimes. And when she’s paid to do so, she says so. “Kuwait bloggers don’t have to tell us they get paid to write their ‘awesome’ reviews,” a student told my class. “We already know that.” Even so, credible bloggers divulge that information, including how much money they received for a review. I’m in favor of paid reviews, or what’s called an “advertorial,” meaning a combination of advertising and editorial. But why not call it what it is?

Who are the bloggers?

Curiously, many Kuwait bloggers not only hide their review policies, but their identity, too, and yet their identities are widely known. Otherwise, how would all those invitations, not to mention the yummy brownies and cash payments, mysteriously appear at their doors? Most bloggers have full-time jobs, most blog for the fun of it, and many have explained to me that they don’t want their coworkers to know who they are (understandable) and they don’t want the government to know, either (and yet, if my students know who they are, how difficult would it be for the

government to know, too?). Of course, the bloggers know the bloggers because they show up together for events closed to the public. I’m in favor of that, too. It helps cultivate a blogger’s community, which in turn could help improve the credibility of blogs in Kuwait. By the way, if credibility continues to decline, the day will come when the blogs are as popular as textbooks.

In spite of my critical eye (or perhaps because of it), I admire the Kuwait blogosphere, and my daily routine, in and out of the country, includes reading newspapers and selective blogs. I rely on both media for information and entertainment, and often as a source for lectures. The late American speaker Charlie “Tremendous” Jones used to say, “Five years from now you will be the same person you are today except for the books your read and the people you meet.” I agree, but nowadays I’d throw bloggers into that mix.

Bloggers enrich our lives My life in Kuwait is more satisfying because of bloggers. For example, Mark at 248am taught me about the virtual private network (I hope the government doesn’t mind that I use VPN). I laugh every time I read a Desert Girl experience - she’s hilarious and could be a novelist. Melwyn at Expat Voices writes well and for all I know may be a journalist. His & Hers - “the bird who fell in love with a fish” - posts thoughtful observations. The Grapevine tells me what’s happening in Kuwait.

7aji Dude brings three different perspectives to the local blogosphere, sometimes with too many photos, but they often write objectively. Kuwait Music is serious, quality reporting. Kuwaitiful keeps posts short, to the point and easy to read.

Expat and the City posts offbeat international updates and includes a Reviews link where she explains her policies (good for her!). I could go on, but you get the idea. It’s worth reading Kuwait blogs, although you have to be selective, and you must read between the lines when you read the reviews.

“People have this impression that blogs are all about making money. It doesn’t have to be that way,” said Blogger Mathai. Well, truly, it isn’t that way. Most bloggers in Kuwait do not make money (more could if they understood how).

“Blogging is satisfaction,” claimed the blogger at Magic Hands. Bingo! It is satisfaction for bloggers, a large number of readers, and some advertisers. I can only hope that bloggers will protect their credibility, and that one day I can join the Kuwait blogosphere. When I do, I won’t mind receiving those “yummy” brownies, and you can be sure I’ll tell you exactly what I think, good or bad. By the way, my wife makes the world’s best brownies, and she doesn’t pay me to say so.

Dr. John P. Hayes teaches online marketing at GUST. Contact Dr. Hayes at questions@hayesworldwide.com, or via Twitter @drjohnhayes. Note: No blogger paid for this column!

KUWAIT: Clouds gather over Kuwait City’s skyline yesterday.

— Photo by Yasser Al-Zayyat

Local FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2013

Conspiracy Theories

What if we all take the initiative?

By Badrya Darwish

badrya_d@kuwaittimes.net

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t has been a while since my last trip to Salmiya’s Old Souq. I usually go not to shop, honestly speaking, but for a stroll. Sometimes you get tired of jogging in empty places. I prefer to do some walking where there are people, shops, lights and colors around you. It makes the walk more pleasurable. You do not feel the time go by.

Salmiya souq has been neglected for a long time. Let’s say, since after the liberation of Kuwait. It appears as if this street does not belong to Kuwait, or there is no municipality to check on what is happening on this street. There are broken pavements and heaps of sand everywhere. If you break your heel by mistake and you fall and twist your ankle, you cannot sue anybody in my country. The system of suing the municipality does not exist. This is why the municipality and the Ministry of Public Works take it easy.

Definitely, it is not the responsibility of the Kuwait Journalists Association.

Amazingly, I drifted from my main point. There is one shop that I always pass by when walking. It attracted my attention yesterday. The shop assistant has taken the initiative to beautify the front of his shop. He planted a few plants and green bushes on both sides of the entrance. At

GLAMOUR: This week was busy for many jewellery shops across Kuwait who welcomed an influx of shoppers who were tempted to invest in gold jewellery after the drop in the price of gold. — Photo by Yasser Al-Zayyat

right you can see the picture. I apologize for the bad quality of the picture, but I was determined to share with the readers what I saw. That is why I snapped it with my mobile. I thought the idea for this beautification was great.

He knew that passersby might abuse his mini-garden and placed a simple fence around the greenery.

This is just one individual attempt. Imagine if all of us, whether we have shops, restaurants or salons, contribute to nature and enhance our entrances with a few green plants. How much of a difference it would make to the trees and the environment. How relaxing it is to the eye of the pedestrian.

Thank you, dear shop assistant, for the great idea. I hope that many people follow your example. I hope such an initiative reaches out to more people and we can jointly make a big difference to our environment. We do not always have to rely on governments. They are always hyper-busy with their own interests. But if they see how serious we are, they might join us.

Enjoy the weekend, and if you have a chance, pass by the Salmiya Souq!

Local FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2013

Treasuring the trash in Yarmouk Recycled materials used to beautify refurbished neighborhood park

By Nawara Fattahova

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project that aims to raise awareness about recycling has turned 10 tons of recycled material into a cosy park in the neighbourhood of Yarmouk where children can play and learn about environment protection.

Yarmouk Park is now welcoming visitors as it displays a new, beautiful look. The park is displaying many new designs, all made from recycled products. Creative lights, figures, statues, seats, and other objects are beautifying this public park, which was constructed through the joint work of volunteers and sponsored by Wataniya Telecom.

The work took about two months. From the beginning, this great project was the idea of Noora Al-Jandal and her colleagues from the Kuwait Institution for Scientific Researches (KISR), who also organize annual environmental programs. “We suggested ways to create this project, as I had plans to improve Yarmouk Park,” said Salah Al-Mousa, Head of Nihtam voluntary Team (We Care), and an employee of the Kuwait Municipality.

He further explained that Wataniya donated the funding for this project contributing some KD 56,000 to purchase most of the material used in the construction. The designs were created by two Kuwaiti artists, who were responsible for the entire work and brought in the laborers to execute it.

— Photos by Yasser Al- Zayyat

Local FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2013

More projects to be done “I made some proposals to the municipality and they will be acted upon soon. People are complaining about garbage thrown in the street near containers, as a result of some laborers searching for cans and metal objects in the garbage to sell as scrap. So we proposed giving workers KD 10 coupons to be used for buying stuff from the co-op, for ideal workers who refrain from such acts,” Al-Mousa said.

Many people are not aware that there are large fines for throwing garbage in the street and on pavements. “Unfortunately, many laws are not enforced, and we are working on reactivating these laws. Violators should be penalized for their violations. Many people throw construction waste, including building materials, onto the pavement and it looks unappealing,” he said. The project started with providing special containers for each house to throw the waste. All the collected garbage was then recycled and this is how the Yarmouk Park came to life.

Onlookers and residents in the Yarmouk neighbourhood say that visitors will be pleased with the impressive work. “The artists have used old tires to create a figure of a turtle, they also shaped tires to turn them into a tree. Empty barrels of oil and some old parts from vehicles were used as vases for flowers, and sewage pipes were turned into lighting, so in the dark the designs are reflected on the ground,” he said elaborating that the artists used old plastic bags from supermarkets to create luxury seats, and old pins, screws and metal objects to design birds. In addition, parts from three old cars became comfortable seats, and also used were old water hoses to make shades.

The goal of this project is to spread awareness. “Through this project, we aim to deliver a message to the public that waste and garbage can be used in useful ways. This is a great opportunity for schools to bring students here so they can see, in reality, how waste was used in this beautiful project. We want to teach the new generation about the benefits of recycling, and how to protect our environment,” explained Al-Mousa.

Al-Mousa, however, is anxious about the park and worried that this great work might be damaged. “Yarmouk Park was damaged in the past, and many of its utilities were destroyed by vandals. I’m worried that this may be repeated, as there are no security guards at the park at the present time, although they are very important. This was the decision of the Public Authority for Agricultural Affairs and Fish Resources (PAAAFR) to remove guards from the parks, which had a negative impact and is criticized by visitors to the park. We hope that PAAAFR will change this decision and return the guards to the parks,” he pointed out.

We aim to deliver a mes sage to the public that waste and garbage can be used in many ways. Students can come and see how waste could be used. We want to teach the new generation about the benefits of recy cling, and how to protect our environment from this garbage.

Local FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2013

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Local FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2013

It’s all about luck A nightmare on Kuwait street

By Ben Garcia

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ar parking is already a nightmare during the daytime in Kuwait. But what about the night-time? The General Traffic Department of the Ministry of Interior had earlier reported that Kuwait’s roads have the capacity to accommodate 700,000 vehicles only, but almost 1.6 million vehicles ply the country’s roads and streets every day. The traffic department was addressing the public about the general traffic congestion on Kuwaiti roads and not about the problem of parking space. If there is a problem of traffic congestion, expect the issue of car parking to be there as well. Imagine where these cars go during the night-time. This reporter roamed around some heavily populated areas of Kuwait, such as Hawally, Salmiya, Farwaniya and Jleeb, and saw nightmarish car-parking problems there, wondering how people managed to live with those. Imagine if there is an emergency. How can you handle it when your car is lost deep inside the socalled parking space? How will you take it out? You will need a crane to remove your car, but then again, a crane can hardly get inside if there is already no free space.

Kuwait Municipality is responsible for issuing building permits for construction projects. One important aspect they look into before granting a permit is whether the project has a proper car-parking plan, as per the regulations. When building owners (landlords) come to the municipality, they should have in their plan a proper parking area at the basement of the building to be constructed. However, the reality on the ground is another story. A source at the municipality said: “To get a permit, they [builders] will of course show a car parking space on the blueprint in order to meet the requirements. But immediately after the building is finished and turned over to the owner, the car park becomes a warehouse for some companies. Some building tenants will have to fight for the remaining limited parking space,” he added. The irony is that some harris (caretaker) would offer parking space on a first-come-first-serve basis, but some harris would sell the space to tenants. “Some harris would lease out the space for KD 10 or up to KD 20 per month. If they are paid, the harris will not allow anyone else to park in the reserved space, which then annoys other tenants,” the source from the municipality noted.

For example, a Filipino tenant at a building in Maidan Hawally went to the police station thrice to report harassment by an Arabic tenant. “I went to the police to report about this Arab man who has been harassing me for parking space. But they just register it and no action is taken. He said the harris had been favouring a lawyer over him. The Filipino tenant said he had

KUWAIT: Cars are seen parked in any available space in residential areas. Finding a place to park - and being able to remove it without having another parked car obstruct it - has become a daily menace for residents of areas like Salmiya, Hawally and Jleeb. — Photos by Yasser Al-Zayyat been using the parking space for quite some time, but when a lawyer moved in to the building, he took over his parking space. “I did complain to the building owner but it was useless. So to my dismay, I left the building and moved into a new one,” he stated. This is only one of the many incidents relating to the parking space problem. As I observed, the car-park situation in Farwaniya was even more horrible. “In the night from 7 pm onwards, you can hardly find any space to park your car. Even the streets are used as a car park. So imagine by 9 pm, if cars could be piled up, they would reach the sky,” one resident told this reporter.

“If you don’t want to be disturbed, you don’t park your car near your place, since you will be blocked automatically. So, avoid your building and look for a relatively spacious and vacant place so that you could move out at any given time without delay,” a tenant advised. The situation in Farwaniya is similar to some areas in Hawally, Salmiya and the rest of heavily populated areas where expats live.

However, other areas such as Mangaf, Jahra and Fahaheel are not facing such problems yet.

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Local FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2013

Addressing the

housing shortage The new regulations will see Kuwait create a “one-stop shop” for licensing and improve corporate governance, both of which could help property developers

KUWAIT: An aerial view of Kuwait is pictured. As the waiting list for government-subsidized housing in Kuwait has grown to more than 100,000 in 2013, projects aimed at combating the shortage will see a number of new construction projects in the coming years. —Photo by Joseph Shagra KUWAIT: As the waiting list for government-subsidized housing in Kuwait has grown to more than 100,000 in 2013, projects aimed at combating the shortage will see a number of new construction projects in the coming years. Sluggish residential real estate growth and restrictive legislation have created difficulties for the sector, but new public-private partnerships (PPPs) and improved credit access could help alleviate Kuwait’s housing problems.

In March 2013, the government revealed plans to build 174,000 new houses and three separate cities by 2020, two near the Iraqi border in the north, and one on the Saudi border in the south. Although no official price tag has been given for the project, estimates put the cost at around $5bn.

Under Kuwaiti law, the country’s 1.2 million nationals are entitled to apply for government housing after marriage, receiving loans that are paid off in small installments over 30 years. However, despite the state’s $400 billion oil surplus, appli-

cations for housing now outstrip supply by more than 100,000 and will grow by an estimated 8000 applications each year, local media has reported.

Land shortages are high on the list of problems facing residential real estate development. Less than 8 percent of the country’s territory has been developed, and 95 percent of land is owned by the government and controlled by the oil and gas sector. Additionally, social expectations mean many Kuwaitis prefer living in houses or villas within Kuwait City and the immediate area - not high-rises in outlying, more remote regions slated for future development.

Rising land prices have also created challenges for Kuwaiti nationals looking to purchase a home. A recent report by Al-Shall Economic Consultants showed a huge increase in residential real estate prices between 2000 and 2011.

According to the report, the average price per sq meter rose by 137.7 per cent, largely due to land shortages. As a result, land can cost up to

$1,000 per sq meter, even in remote areas.

Development is further hampered by laws making it difficult for investors to enter Kuwait’s market.

Under Laws 8 and 9, passed in 2008 to curb speculation, private companies are restricted from buying and trading residential property. The impact of these problems is reflected in the sector’s recent underperformance. In its March 2013 economic report, the National Bank of Kuwait announced total real estate sales in January fell to KD 254 million, a 20 percent year-on-year (y-oy) decrease, while residential sales stood at KD 145 million, down KD 25 million y-o-y.

“The long-term fix is for the government to open the sector to investments from international companies and allow participation in the residential market,” said Saleh Al-Kouh, chairman of the Kuwait Real Estate Investment Consortium. “The government can standardize the sector by deregulating parts of the law that prohibit private participation. The private

sector has the potential to contribute greatly to residential real estate if allowed.”

The government has taken steps to improve business regulations in recent months, starting with sweeping reforms approved in December designed to improve ease of doing business and attract new foreign investors. The new regulations will see Kuwait create a “one-stop shop” for licensing and improve corporate governance, both of which could help property developers.

To help its residential development move forward, Kuwait’s leadership has also announced plans to accept tenders and embark on a number of PPPs as it strives to meet its 2020 target. For example, the Public Authority for Housing Welfare recently announced it is looking to appoint advisors on the development of two PPP projects for over 30,000 new housing units.

The first is for the development of nearly 10,000 units in a low-cost housing scheme, and the second is for an additional 21,000 units at the Al-Khiran Housing City.

In addition to enhancing its foreign partnerships, Kuwait’s leadership is taking steps to breathe life into the residential real estate sector, starting with the Central Bank of Kuwait’s decision to drop interest rates to 2 percent in October 2012.

The government went a step further in March 2013 when it increased the maximum amount of home loans available to women to KD 70,000 from KD 45,000, while the amount citizens can borrow for renovations rose to KD 35,000 from KD 30,000.

The Cabinet also instructed the Credit and Savings Bank to amend its legislation, allowing maximum home loan amounts to jump to KD 500,000 from KD 300,000.

To meet its housing commitments, the government is increasingly turning to PPPs, easing legal restrictions for foreign investors and improving credit access for its citizens. These efforts should serve to ease the housing shortage, drive growth in the non-oil sectors and improve infrastructure development across the country.

—Oxford Business Group

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Local FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2013

MP Zalzalah urges PM to reshuffle Cabinet Courts continue trial of tweeters

By B Izzak

KUWAIT: The destroyed hamour fish is pictured.

— Hanan Al-Saadoun

Something fishy: 400 kilos of hamour seized

By Hanan Al-Saadoun KUWAIT: The imported food department at the Kuwait Municipality destroyed 400 kilograms of Grouper (hamour) fish over its strong foul odor and obvious change in appearance on inspection at Doha Port. Officials said the fish isn’t fit for human consumption. Director of Imported Food Department Istiqlal Al-Musallam said the confiscated fish was seized due to the thorough inspection of imported foods at all border centers. She added that the centers employ expert inspectors who care about the public’s health. Al-Musallam said no food will be allowed into the country until after it is inspected and found to be edible.

KUWAIT: Shiite MP Youssef Al-Zalzalah yesterday called on Prime Minister Sheikh Jaber Al-Mubarak Al-Sabah to reshuffle his Cabinet if he wanted to keep the pace of reforms, saying it is time for some ministers to leave without naming anyone.

“It’s time for a number of ministers to exit the Cabinet... as they cannot be trusted to carry out reforms” said Zalzalah and added that “it’s time for a Cabinet reshuffle”. The lawmaker gave no details of which ministers should be axed from the Cabinet formed midDecember following parliamentary election that was boycotted by the opposition in protest against amending the electoral law.

Zalzalah told the prime minister that some members of his Cabinet team have no capability to carry out the reforms initiated by him and they must leave.

“If your Highness is keen on the reforms, and you are, then we have to strongly say that it is time for a change

in the Cabinet. We say this out of respect for you and to preserve what remains of cooperation between the government and the assembly” Zalzalah said, addressing the prime minister.

The lawmaker neither named any particular minister who should be removed nor did he criticize any ministry for any shortcoming in the current government.

Over the past few weeks, MPs have become increasingly critical of several ministers warning to grill them. Interior Minister Sheikh Ahmad Al-Humoud AlSabah topped the list of ministers under fire especially over his handling of the opposition protests and an alleged deal with an Israeli-owned Canada-based security systems company.

A number of MPs have threatened to file to grill the interior minister in addition to the minister of electricity and water, defense ministers and others over a variety of accusations. Long-time critic of the interior minister MP Safa AlHashem yesterday called on the minister to “either wake up or quit”.

Several MPs yesterday welcomed the

announcement of the prime minister to freeze the new media draft law which stipulates hefty financial penalties against violators that reach around KD 300,000 up from a maximum of KD 20,000 in the current law.

MP Saad Al-Bous described the step as “highly positive” and an indication of the government’s positive response to concerns expressed by media people and MPs about the threat to press freedom and freedom of speech.

Islamist MP Khaled Al-Shulaimi welcomed the premier’s move and called on the government to hear remarks of media people before proposing the legislation.

In another development, the criminal court yesterday postponed the cases of opposition tweeters Sager Al-Hashash to May 2 and Mutlaq Al-Sanad to May 16 to issue its ruling.

Hashash is in jail serving a two-year term on another case for insulting the Amir and the postponement came because the central jail failed to bring the tweeter to the court for the second time in a row.

Forgery complaint filed

By Hanan Al-Saadoun KUWAIT: A citizen has accused an employee at a service center of placing an Asian under his sponsorship without his knowledge. He said immigration detectives identified the employee who processed the transaction, adding that when he went to the center in Mubarak Al-Kabeer area, he found out that the employee was not present on the site. A forgery complaint was filed at the local police station.

MARSA ALAM: The participants of the KuwaitiEgyptian meeting are pictured.

Wallet flicked Meanwhile, another citizen accused an unknown person of stealing his wallet that included papers and a master card, through which he withdrew KD 1,007.

Maids accused In Surra, a citizen accused his two maids - two Asians- of stealing KD 1,000. The names of the two women were added to the travel ban list.

An Arab expat accused an Asian of molesting his 14-yearold son inside a lift.

KFSD participates in Kuwaiti-Egyptian meet

By Hanan Al-Saadoun KUWAIT: The Kuwait Fire Services Directorate participated, along with other Kuwaiti and Egyptian agencies, in a KuwaitiEgyptian meeting from April 22-24, 2013 at Marsa Alam in Egypt, under the patronage of Former Prime Minister Dr Ali Lutfi and Kuwait Ambassador in Egypt Dr Rasheed Al-Hamad.

Drugs busted A citizen and another person of unknown nationality in Salmiya were caught in possession of drugs and heroin. Both were sent to the drugs control authorities.

Officials of the international drugs-fighting department under the drugs control general authority arrested three persons for trading in drugs. The officials were tipped off that the three were in possession of drugs and were trading in them.

When the information was authenticated, the officials conducted a raid on a house where 300 grams of heroin, 20 grams of Shabo and 1,500 mind-altering tablets were seized.

The three confessed to the charges and were sent to the concerned authorities.

KUWAIT: Drug smugglers who were busted by the narcotics department are pictured.

—Photo by Hanan Al-Saadoun

Driving test appointments to be done online KUWAIT: In order to keep in touch with citizens and expats and make things easier, the traffic department, in cooperation with the department of data systems, launched a service to make

appointments for driving licenses tests on trial basis. The service will start first at the capital governorate, then it will be generalized in all governorates.

This service comes as a first stop in

the field of developing the traffic services, to make them electronic and provide them over the internet, in order to reduce the crowds in concerned departments.

FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2013

Taleban and taboos deter Pakistan women from vote

With eye on Iran, US, UAE seal arms deal

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Asian housemaids fear for future amid Cyprus slump

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SAVAR: A victimís body lies amid rubble at the site of a building that collapsed in Savar, near Dhaka, Bangladesh. — AP

Bangladesh death toll hits 250 Spate of tragedies prompts criticisms SAVAR: Dozens of workers were found alive yesterday as they huddled in the wreckage of a collapsed garment factory bloc in Bangladesh, a rare success for rescuers who have pulled out 250 bodies. In an announcement greeted by wild applause from thousands of relatives at the scene, an army spokesman initially announced that 40 survivors had been discovered together in a room, but the figure was later revised to 24.

Screams filtering through the cracks in the concrete suggested more survivors were awaiting help, but a steady stream of bodies saw the recorded death toll almost double yesterday and hundreds remain unaccounted for. The collapse of the building on Wednesday on the outskirts of the capital is the worst industrial accident in the country’s history and is the latest in a spate of tragedies in the “Made in Bangladesh” clothing sector.

It prompted new criticism of Western brands who were accused by activists of placing profit before safety by sourcing their products from the country despite its shocking

track record of deadly disasters. Hundreds of thousands of workers walked out of their factories in solidarity with their dead colleagues yesterday as flags flew at half mast and a national day of mourning was held.

“The death toll is now 250,” Moshiuddowla Reza, a senior police officer of Dhaka district said from the disaster site, adding more bodies were being recovered and that most of those who died are female garment workers. Safety problems and poor working conditions plague the textile industry in Bangladesh, the world’s second-biggest clothing exporter after China.

Last November a blaze at a factory making products for Walmart and other Western labels left 111 people dead, with survivors describing how fire exits were kept locked by site managers. Only British low-cost fashion line Primark and Spanish giant Mango have acknowledged having their products made in the collapsed factory bloc, while a host of brands including Wal-Mart and France’s Carrefour are investigating.

Italian fashion line Benetton denied having

a supplier in the building but a local workers’ group provided documents showing apparent orders from the company in August and September last year. The company did not reply to repeated requests from AFP for comment. Survivors said the building developed visible cracks on Tuesday evening, but factory bosses had demanded staff return to the production lines despite a police evacuation order.

One manager for the New Wave Styles company, one of the five manufacturers in the building, told how the owner had consulted an engineer but then ignored his warnings.

“Those who’re involved, especially the owner who forced the workers to work there, will be punished,” Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina told lawmakers. “Wherever he is, he will be found and brought to justice.” At the scene of the disaster, relatives desperate for news descended in their thousands, clutching photographs and hoping to see their missing loved ones pulled out by firemen and soldiers.

“I became so thirsty that at one stage I

drank my urine,” said an ecstatic Abul Hossain, 23, as he was dragged from the ruins more than 25 hours after the disaster struck at around 09:00 am on Wednesday. But others were less lucky, with body after body laid out on the grounds of a nearby school for identification. “I’ve seen all the bodies. My sister was not among them. She is also not in any of the hospitals,” said Mukta Begum, holding the photo of her younger sibling Suryaban, a garment worker.

Babul Akhter, head of the Bangladesh Garments and Industrial Workers Federation said that the factory owners-who have gone into hiding-would likely escape justice despite the outcry. “Garment entrepreneurs are above the law here. There is hardly any example of an owner being prosecuted for this kind of outright murder,” he said. “The Western retailers are also complicit because they give a blind eye to the manufacturers’ shoddy practices.” Before the 24 were found, Ahmed Ali, the national fire service chief said that 20 people had been rescued. — AFP

International FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2013

Iraq bloodshed stokes fears of sectarian conflict BAGHDAD: The deaths of more than 100 people in violence between Iraqi security forces and Sunni Arab protesters and their supporters have raised fears of a return to all-out sectarian conflict. The trouble began on Tuesday when security forces moved into an area near the northern town of Hawijah where Sunnis had been holding protests since January, sparking clashes in which 53 people died.

That fighting set off a wave of revenge attacks that hit five different Sunni-majority provinces, killing dozens more people, and which saw gunmen take control of the town of Sulaiman Bek. The violence is the deadliest so far linked to demonstrations that erupted in Sunni areas of the Shiite-majority country more than four months ago. The Sunni protesters have called for the resigna-

tion of Shiite Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki and railed against the alleged targeting of their community by the authorities.

“This is the deepest and most dangerous crisis... since 1921,” former national security adviser Mowaffak Al-Rubaie said, referring to the year in which the state of Iraq was established. He warned that the current situation “could lead to a sectarian conflict, and then division.” Sectarian violence, including bombings and death squad murders that peaked in 2006 and 2007, claimed tens of thousands of lives. The security situation has since improved markedly, but sectarian tensions remain.

On Wednesday, Abdulghafur AlSamarraie and Saleh Al-Haidari, top clerics who respectively head the Sunni and Shiite religious endowments, held a joint news

conference in which they warned against sectarian strife. Samarraie said there were “malicious plans... with the goal of taking the country towards sectarian conflict”, and that he and Haidari agreed “to move quickly to extinguish the strife and stop the conspiracy”. US State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell told reporters that Washington condemns the violence in Iraq and that “there’s no place for sectarian conflict in a democratic state.”

An earlier statement from the US embassy said that “US officials have been in contact with senior Iraqi leaders to help defuse political and sectarian tensions.” John Drake, an Iraq specialist with risk consulting firm AKE Group, said the high death toll from security force action in recent days highlighted shortcomings in the government’s

approach to protest. “I think the government response indicates that it has a long way to go in terms of its policies for dealing with protest movements in the country,” said John Drake, an Iraq specialist with risk consulting firm AKE Group.

“The use of force so readily, including firearms, at protest camps and the bombing of settlements where militants are believed to be sheltering, is going to bring a very high risk of collateral damage,” Drake said. “An ‘all-out’ sectarian conflict is still unlikely,” he said. “But the fact that this is a predominantly Shiite government and it’s predominantly Shiite security forces opening fire on predominantly Sunni individuals (civilians or militants) is going to have an impact on sectarian relations and could prompt a rise in sectarian violence as a result.” — AFP

With eye on Iran, US, UAE seal arms deal US, UAE want to thwart Iran’s military power ABU DHABI: US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel met United Arab Emirates leaders yesterday to wrap up a major arms deal that both nations see as a way to thwart Iran’s military power. Hagel arrived in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday on the last leg of a six-nation tour of the Middle East in which he has sought to renew ties with American allies who share Washington’s concerns over Iran’s nuclear project and Syria’s civil war.

Before his departure, the Pentagon announced plans for an elaborate weapons sale to Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, including more than two dozen F-16 fighter jets to the UAE at a value of nearly $5 billion.

The preliminary arms deal “really cements a long term and enduring partnership” with the Emirates, a senior defense official told reporters travelling with Hagel. By endorsing the deal, the

UAE has demonstrated “its trust in the United States” as a reliable partner, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The arms sale, which involves a longterm commitment to train UAE pilots and provide spare parts, shows “that the US isn’t going anywhere, that the United States is firmly committed to the security of all our regional partners,” the official said. The F-16 deal-and the perceived threat posed by Iran-will be high on the agenda yesterday evening when Hagel meets Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahayan, Abu Dhabi crown prince and deputy head of the UAE’s armed forces, officials said.

Located only about 56 kilometers from Iran across the Strait of Hormuz, the United Arab Emirates is anxious about the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran as well as the consequences of a

possible Israeli pre-emptive strike to prevent Tehran from attaining an atomic arsenal. As Iran’s uranium enrichment has progressed along with its missile program, the UAE has spent billions beefing up its air power and missile defenses.

The UAE also has backed tough sanctions against Iran despite extensive trade and commercial ties with its northern neighbor. Dubai, the second-largest emirate after Abu Dhabi, hosts a large Iranian diaspora and much of Iran’s imports and exports flow through Dubai’s bustling ports. Hagel flew to Abu Dhabi from Cairo in a trip that has included stops in Israel, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. US defense officials said grave worries about Syria’s conflict came up in all of Hagel’s meetings, amid renewed fears the Damascus regime may have used chemical weapons. — AFP

Bahrain ‘dismayed’ by US rights assessment report DUBAI: Authorities in Bahrain, which has been rocked by Shiite-led protests for two years, have voiced “dismay” over an assessment by the US State Department of the rights situation in the kingdom.

“The report includes texts which are totally far from the truth, adopting a manner that fuels terror and terrorists targeting Bahrain’s national security,” state news agency BNA late on Wednesday quoted government spokeswoman Samira Rajab as saying. The strategic tiny kingdom of Bahrain, home to the US Fifth Fleet, has been hit since February 2011 by a wave of Shiite-led protests calling for the ouster of Prime Minister Sheikh Khalifa bin Salman al-Khalifa, an uncle of King Hamad, in office since 1971.

A US State Department report released on April 19 said that “the most serious human rights problems included citizens’ inability to change their government peacefully; arrest and detention of protesters on vague charges, in some cases leading to their torture in detention.” It criticized the “lack of due process in trials of

political and human rights activists, medical personnel, teachers, and students, with some resulting in harsh sentences.” The report claimed that “discrimination on the basis of gender, religion, nationality, and sect persisted, especially against the Shiite population” which makes up a majority in Bahrain-ruled by the Sunni Al-Khalifa dynasty.

Rajab “deplored the report for lacking objectivity, totally siding with the terrorists who seek to sow chaos in the whole region.” Bahrain refers to protesters who clash frequently with police forces in Shiite villages as “terrorists” it claims are backed by Shiite-majority Iran.

The kingdom “reiterated full commitment to comply with the human rights principles and standards in confronting terror which targets Bahrain and innocent civilians,” said Rajab. The State Department report acknowledged that “some protesters engaged in lethal acts of violence against security forces, including the use of improvised explosive devices, Molotov cocktails, and other improvised weapons.” — AFP

GUANTANAMO BAY: Photo shows the front gate of ‘Camp Six’ detention facility of the Joint Detention Group at the US Naval Station in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. — AFP

Guantanamo detainees on hunger strike WASHINGTON: More prisoners have joined a hunger strike to protest their indefinite detention at the US-run Guantanamo military prison, with 92 out of 166 detainees refusing food, a spokesman said Wednesday. Among them, 17 are on feeding tubes and two are hospitalized but do not have “life-threatening conditions,” Lieutenant Colonel Samuel House said in a statement.

The rapidly growing movement began on February 6, lawyers for the detainees said. Prison authorities began releasing figures on the strike on March 15, saying 14 inmates were participating. Lawyers for the detainees say the official numbers are still too low. David Remes, a lawyer who represents 15 prisoners, said some 130 prisoners have been on strike since February. “At first, GTMO denied that there was a hunger strike. Since then, its count has risen from 0 to 92. Soon they’ll hit the mark despite themselves,” he said.

House also confirmed to AFP that two prisoners had attempted suicide on or around April 13, when some 60 detainees were transferred from communal cells into individual ones after guards fired non-lethal shots to quell prisoner unrest. House said only “10 to 15 are still in communal” cells, indicating that many detainees refuse to comply with prison rules. “Some of them are continuing to throw feces, urine and blood at the guards,” he said. The spokesman said “as soon as the detainees show a proper compliance with the rules, then we will move them back into communal.” “It’s all up to the detainees,” he added.

He said the separation also allowed the guards, accompanied by doctors, to ask inmates “on an individual basis: do you want to be a hunger striker?” far from the influence of the leaders in the cell blocks. — AFP

International FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2013

A look at North Korea military capabilities SEOUL: North Korea’s military, founded 81 years ago is older than the country itself. It began as an anti-Japanese militia and is now the heart of the nation’s “military first” policy.

Late leader Kim Jong Il elevated the military’s role during his 17-year rule, boosting troop levels to an estimated 1.2 million soldiers, according to the South Korean government.

The military’s new supreme commander, Kim Jong Un, gave the Korean People’s Army a sharpened focus this year by instructing troops to build a “nuclear arms force.” Yet the army is believed to be running on outdated equipment and short supplies. The secretive army divulges few details about its operations, but here is an assessment from foreign experts of its strengths and weaknesses: ARTILLERY North Korea provided a chilling reminder of what its artillery is capable of when it showered a front-line South Korean island with shells, killing four people in November 2010 and underscoring the threat that its artillery troops pose at the disputed sea border. South Korea says North Korea has more than 13,000 artillery guns, and its long-range batteries are capable of hitting the capital Seoul, a city of more than 10 million people just 30 miles from the border. “North Korea’s greatest advantage is that its artillery could initially deliver a heavy bombardment on the South Korean capital,” Mark Fitzpatrick, a former US State Department official now with the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said in an email. South Korea’s defense minister estimates that 70 percent of North Korean artillery batteries along the border could be “neutralized” in five days if war broke out. But Sohn Yong-woo, a professor at the Graduate School of National Defense Strategy of Hannam University in South Korea, said that would be too late to prevent millions of civilian casualties and avert a disastrous blow to Asia’s fourth-largest economy.

SPECIAL FORCES Experts believe guerrilla warfare would be the North’s most viable strategy in the event of conflict, since its conventional army suffers from aging equipment and a shortage of firepower. Seoul estimates North Korea has about 200,000 Special Forces, and Pyongyang has used them before. In 1968, 31 North Korean commandos stormed Seoul’s presidential Blue House in a failed assassination attempt against then-President Park Chunghee.

That same year, more than 120 North Korean commandos sneaked into eastern South Korea and killed some 20 South Korean civilians, soldiers and police officers. In 1996, 26 North Korean agents infiltrated South Korea’s northeastern mountains after their submarine broke down, sparking a manhunt that left all but two of them dead, along with 13 South Korean soldiers and civilians.

“The special forces’ goal is to discourage both the United States and South Korea from fighting with North Korea at the earliest stage of war by putting major infrastructure, such as nuclear plants, and their citizens at risk,” said Kim Yeon-su, a professor at Korea National Defense University in Seoul. “The North’s special forces are a key component of its asymmetric capabilities along with nuclear bombs, missiles and artillery. Their job is to create as many battlefronts as possible to put their enemies in disarray.”

ON LAND, BY SEA AND IN THE AIR In March 2010, 46 South Korean sailors died in a Yellow Sea attack on their warship

that Seoul blamed on a North Korean submarine. Pyongyang denies involvement.

Separately, since 1999, North and South Korean navies have fought three bloody skirmishes near their disputed western maritime border. Experts say those battles show while

MISSILES, NUCLEAR WEAPONS North Korea says it needs to develop nuclear weapons as a deterrent against US aggression. It has conducted three underground nuclear tests since 2006, the most recent in February. Pyongyang is believed to

JANGJAE ISLET: In this undated file photo, a rocket launcher is fired during a live drill by the Jangjae Islet Defense Detachment and the Mu Islet Hero Defense Detachment deployed in the southwestern sector of North Korea. — AP the South has an edge in naval firepower and technology, the North relies on the element of surprise.

North Korea has 70 submarines while South Korea has 10, according to Seoul’s Defense Ministry. The most menacing threats from the North’s navy are small submarines that would deposit commando raiders along the South Korean coast, said John Pike, head of the Globalsecurity.org think tank. North Korea also has 820 warplanes, more than South Korea, though Seoul is backed up by American air power. The South says most of the North’s aircraft are obsolete. North Korea also suffers chronic fuel shortages that have forced its air force to cut sorties, experts say.

“North Korea would not be able to prosecute a full-fledged war for very long,” Fitzpatrick said. “Its biggest problem is that North Korea would quickly lose control of the skies because of the vastly superior (South Korean) and US air forces. The reported number of North Korean aircraft is meaningless, because many of them cannot fly, and North Korean pilots have little training in the air.”

The US stations 28,500 US troops in South Korea and has recently flown nuclear-capable stealth B-2 bombers and F-22 fighter jets during joint drills in a show of force aimed at deterring North Korea.

Logistics and supplies are another issue.

Heavy equipment deployed by naval and air forces require extensive repairs, especially on rugged terrain like the Korean Peninsula.

South Korea’s Defense Ministry estimates North Korea’s wartime resources, mostly stored underground, would last only two to three months. “North Korea’s only chance of winning any war depends on how quickly it can end one,” Sohn said. North Korea could try to compensate for its lack of effective equipment with sheer manpower. North Korea, a country of about 25 million, has an estimated 7.7 million reserves.

have enough weaponized plutonium for four to eight nuclear bombs, according to Siegfried Hecker, a nuclear expert with Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation. But he doubts Pyongyang has mastered the technology to tip a missile with a nuclear warhead. “I don’t believe North Korea has the capacity to attack the United States with nuclear weapons mounted on missiles and won’t for many years,” he said on the website of Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies this month. Bruce Bennett, a Rand Corp. expert, said earlier this month that it’s very unlikely the North has a nuclear missile capable of hitting the US but said there is a “reasonable chance” that Pyongyang has short-range nuclear missile capability.

CHEMICAL AND BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS North Korea denies it runs any chemical and biological weapons programs. South Korea claims that Pyongyang has up to 5,000 tons of chemical weapons. The IISS says that although the figures are “highly speculative,” the North probably does possess chemical and biological arms programs. “Whatever the actual status of North Korea’s chemical and biological capabilities, the perception that it has, or likely has, chemical and biological weapons contributes to Pyongyang’s interest in creating uncertainties in Washington, Seoul and Tokyo and raises the stakes to deter or intimidate potential enemies,” it said on its website. North Korea is not a signatory to the Chemical Weapons Convention, but it has acceded to the non-binding Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention. — AP

S Korea offers North talks, with a warning SEOUL: South Korea yesterday formally offered North Korea talks on suspended operations at their joint Kaesong industrial zone, and hinted it might pull out entirely if Pyongyang declines. The South said it was offering working-level talks to resolve the impasse over Kaesong, a rare symbol of inter-Korean cooperation that has become the most notable victim of escalating military tensions on the Korean peninsula.

But the offer came with an ultimatum of unspecified “significant measures” if Pyongyang fails to accept the proposal within 24 hours. “There is no change on our stance to support the stable operation and improvement” of Kaesong, Unification Ministry Spokesman Kim Hyung-Seok said.

“But we cannot let this situation continue as it is,” he added. “If North Korea rejects our proposal... we have no choice but to take significant measures.”

Kim did not elaborate on what steps might be taken, but the ultimatum suggested South Korea was considering a permanent withdrawal from the zone, which normally employs 53,000 workers at 123 South Korean companies. The talks proposed by Seoul would be between the respective heads of the North and South committees that oversee Kaesong operations. The proposal came a day after Seoul announced pan-governmental action to help firms with factories in Kaesong deal with liquidity problems caused by lost production and the cancellation of orders.

Established in 2004 and lying 10 kilometers inside North Korea, Kaesong is a crucial hard currency source for the impoverished

North, through taxes and revenues, and from its cut of the workers’ wages. The project was born out the “Sunshine Policy” of inter-Korean conciliation initiated in the late 1990s by South Korean President Kim DaeJung which led to a historic summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il in 2000.

It operates as a collaborative economic development zone that hosts South Korean companies attracted by its source of cheap, educated, skilled labor. Turnover in 2012 was reported at $469.5 million, with accumulated turnover since 2004 standing at $1.98 billion. The Korean peninsula was already engulfed in a cycle of escalating tensions triggered by the North’s nuclear test in February-when Pyongyang decided on April 3 to block all South Korean access to Kaesong. Angered by the South’s defense minister remarks on the existence of a “military” contingency plan to protect South Korean staff in Kaesong, the North then pulled out its entire workforce on April 9 and suspended operations. Since then it has denied repeated requests to send food and other supplies to South Koreans who opted to remain in the zone to maintain their nonrunning production lines. Even given the soaring tensions, the North’s decision to suspend operations at Kaesong was unexpected, as neither side has allowed previous crises to significantly affect the complex.

Permanent closure would wipe out the last remaining point of contact and cooperation between North and South, which remain technically at war after the 1950-53 Korean War was concluded with a ceasefire rather than a peace treaty. — AFP

International FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2013

ASEAN reaches out to China on maritime disputes BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN: Southeast Asian nations stepped up efforts yesterday to engage China in talks to resolve maritime tensions, with Thailand calling on foreign ministers to agree a common stance on the South China Sea ahead of discussions in Beijing later this year. The initiative by Thailand came as the 10member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) tried to patch up differences that shook the group last year, but struggled to make progress on long-held plans to agree on a dispute-management mechanism. “Most especially there was a call to have continued engagement with China,” Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa told reporters in Bandar Seri Begawan, the capital of this year’s summit host Brunei.

He said that Thailand, which has the role of ASEAN coordinator with China, had called for the talks ahead of an ASEANChina meeting expected in August to commemorate 10 years since they formed a “strategic partnership”. China has said it will only join talks when the time is “ripe” and insists on resolving sovereignty dis-

putes on a bilateral basis. Meanwhile, it has flexed its growing “blue water” naval muscle by occupying some areas claimed

by Vietnam and the Philippines, leading to a rise in tension.

Efforts by ASEAN to craft a code of conduct to manage South China Sea tensions all but collapsed last year at a summit chaired by Cambodia, a close economic ally of China. Cambodia was accused of trying to keep the issue off the agenda despite a surge in tension over disputed areas and growing concern about China’s assertive stance in enforcing its claims over a vast, potentially energy-rich sea area. Without mentioning Cambodia, Philippine President Benigno Aquino drew a strong contrast with last year’s discussions following a dinner on Wednesday with fellow leaders.

He described as “beautiful” the fact that Brunei Prime Minister and Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah had brought up the South China Sea issue as the first subject. “We should really be thankful that the whole of ASEAN is willing to discuss this instead of putting it on the back burner,” Aquino told

reporters. The tiny oil kingdom of Brunei has a claim in the South China Sea, but along with Malaysia has taken a more lowkey approach compared with the Philippines and Vietnam.

WORK WITH CHINA But prospects for quick progress on a legally binding code of conduct appear dim due to differences over how to frame the agreement. The summit-concluding communique yesterday made no new announcement on the code of conduct, but said ASEAN ministers had been tasked to “work actively with China” for an “early conclusion” of the proposed agreement.

China claims almost the entire South China Sea as its territory based on historical records, setting it directly against US allies Vietnam and the Philippines, while Brunei, Taiwan and Malaysia also claim parts. A US move to rebalance its military forces to focus more on Asia has threatened to worsen tension, reinforcing China’s fears of encirclement. China has had a permanent naval presence for a year at the Scarborough Shoal, a rich fishing

ground 124 nautical miles off the Philippines northwestern coast.

Last month, it sent four warships to land troops on its southernmost claim the James Shoal, 80 km (50 miles) off the Malaysian coast and close to Brunei.

Tensions are likely to tick up again in coming months, as monsoon weather eases and China imposes a unilateral annual fishing ban that has irritated Vietnam and the Philippines. Frustrated with the slow pace of regional diplomacy, the Philippines in January angered China by asking a United Nations tribunal to order a halt to Beijing’s activities, such as those at Scarborough Shoal, that it said violated its sovereignty. The Philippines appeared to win backing for that approach in Brunei, despite concern that it could be used by China as a reason to further delay talks on a code of conduct. “What the Philippines has chosen, in our view, is consistent with ... the ASEANChina process,” Natalegawa told reporters.

The Philippines also said that Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung had “expressed support” for its move in a meeting with Aquino. — Reuters

Afghan policewomen suffer ‘sexual abuse’ Rights group urges safe toilets for policewomen KABUL: Afghanistan’s policewomen suffer sexual assault by male colleagues, often inside police stations, a rights group said yesterday, calling for women-only toilets and changing facilities to curb such abuse.

Addressing the concerns of policewomen is necessary to address the “rampant violence” against women in the wider society, said Human Rights Watch (HRW). “Harassment and abuse is an everyday experience for many Afghan women,” said HRW Asia director Brad Adams. “Without the consistent presence of female police officers across the country, legal protections for women will remain an unfulfilled promise.”

In a statement the group cited “numerous” media reports of the rape of female officers by male colleagues, and said the lack of separate secure toilets or places to change clothes makes them particularly vulnerable. Many of the country’s 1,500 female police cannot travel to work in uniform because of threats posed by Taleban insurgents or by others in the conservative Islamic nation opposed to the concept of women police. “As the number of women in the police force has risen, so have the allegations by female officers of having been raped, assaulted or sexually harassed by male colleagues,” HRW said.

And when such assaults happen, they often occur in isolated places such as unsafe toilets and changing areas. The rights group said policewomen have no access to “suitable and safe” separate restrooms and orders by top officials to provide them had been ignored. “The government of Afghanistan should take immediate action to ensure that the country’s female police officers have access to separate, safe and lockable restroom facilities in police stations,” it said.

Women make up just one percent of the war-torn country’s 160,000-strong Westernfunded police force. The number is set to

Quake, floods kill 38 in Afghanistan

HERAT: Afghan policewomen attend their graduation ceremony in Herat, west of Kabul, Afghanistan. Human Rights Watch urged the Afghan government yesterday to force police stations to build restrooms for female officers to protect them from sexual harassment. — AP increase about five-fold under government aimed at regaining power. President Hamid plans. Women in male-dominated Karzai’s Western-backed government has Afghanistan still suffer from domestic vio- passed a law, on “elimination of violence lence and other abuse 12 years after the fall against women”, to ensure greater protecof the Taleban, which banned them from tion. But “the law has not been adequately attending school or any form of public activ- enforced, in part because of the lack of ity during their 1996-2001 rule. female police officers to assist female crime The Taleban were toppled by a US-led victims, including other police officers”, invasion but are waging an insurgency HRW said. — AFP

KABUL: A powerful earthquake and flash floods which struck Afghanistan this week killed at least 38 people and damaged hundreds of homes, the presidential palace said yesterday, offering aid to victims. Wednesday’s quake killed 17 and injured 126 in the eastern province of Nangarhar while 300 homes were damaged, a statement said. In neighboring Kunar province, one person was killed, four injured and 45 homes damaged.

The continuing flash floods in the northern province of Balkh have killed 20 and damaged 1,900 houses, it said.

Floods had also cost lives and damaged property in Ghor and Baghlan provinces, the statement said without giving any figures. President Hamid Karzai had ordered emergency help for victims, it added. The quake centered in Nangarhar caused widespread damage in some villages because most of the houses are built of mud.

Provincial government spokesman Ahmad Zia Abdulzai put the death toll there at 16 but said it may rise.

At an emergency meeting yesterday, the private sector and relief agencies agreed to provide emergency aid and the central government also offered assistance, he said. Mud-built homes were also no match for raging floodwaters in Balkh. “The badly affected areas are impoverished villages where most of the homes are mudbuilt and can be easily damaged when floods come,” said provincial government spokesman Munir Ahmad Farhad on Wednesday. — AFP

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International FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2013

Taleban, taboos bar millions of women from Pakistan vote Some religious leaders call women voting ‘un-Islamic’ ISLAMABAD: Next month’s elections should mark the first democratic transition of power in Pakistan, but Taleban threats, social taboos and poor organization will likely deprive millions of women their right to vote. Out of a population of 180 million, 37 million women and 48 million men are registered to vote in the May 11 polls in a country that has been ruled by generals for half its life and where military coups have repeatedly interrupted democracy. But in the conservative northwest Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, adjoining tribal areas on the Afghan border and southwestern province Baluchistan, few women voted at the last election and officials fear it will be the same again.

“We waited the whole day... but not a single woman turned up because of a ban imposed by tribal elders,” remembers Badama Begum, a 33-year-old teacher who worked at a polling station in 2008 in the northwestern district of Mardan. Election authorities set up a separate station staffed only by women to guarantee around 350 registered female voters complete privacy, but it was a waste of time. “We closed the polling station in the evening, returned the blank ballot papers and empty boxes to the election commission, and left,” she said.

In 2008, not a single vote was cast at 564 of 28,800 women’s polling stations 55 percent of them in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, officials said. In the most conservative areas, officials estimated women’s turnout at 10-15 percent of those registered. That year, 76 women ran for parliament and 16 won seats.

The election commission says there are more women candidates this time, but had no precise number.

Registering to vote is a routine process conducted by officials who go door-to-door to compile a list of adults with ID cards in each household. But this in itself leaves millions of women disenfranchised. Women’s rights activist Farzana Bari estimates that at least 11 million eligible women will not be able to vote simply because authorities have not granted them national identity cards. The elections themselves present further barriers to women, with some religious leaders believing women voting is un-Islamic.

Voting for a man they do not know, some mullahs counseled in 2008, was grounds for automatic divorce-a social taboo few are prepared to entertain.

“Our society does not allow us to bring our women to vote,” said Sharif Khan, 50, a solar energy dealer in Miranshah, the main town in the tribal district of North Waziristan, the most notorious Taleban and Al-Qaeda stronghold in Pakistan. “We are afraid of the Taleban.

They oppose women voting, so why should we take the risk?” he asked.

In tribal communities such as these, women live in purdah, confined to women’s only quarters at home. They

ISLAMABAD: A Pakistani couple walks past an electoral billboard with the message “Pakistan is calling, your country, your future,” in Islamabad.

Next month’s elections should mark the first democratic transition of power in Pakistan, but Taleban threats, social taboos and poor organization will deprive millions of women their right to vote —AFP do not go shopping, they do not work outside the house and they only go to the hospital in a dire emergency.

Literacy rates are low, even lower for women. General disillusionment also runs high in some of the most remote and deprived parts of the country.

“Women in our area don’t even know how to vote,” said Miranshah cloth merchant Adam Khan, 35. “Our MPs do nothing for our welfare. So it’s not just our women, I won’t vote this time either,” he fumed.

In urban areas, politicians lay on transport to ferry voters to and from polling stations, but in the countryside it becomes more complicated when women are not allowed to travel without a close male relative. Aware of the problem, the election commission tried to introduce reforms that no candidate could win with less than 10 percent of the women’s vote in his constituency, but it was rejected in parliament, said spokesman Khurshid Alam.

He says the commission will try to

enforce legislation against those who try to stop women from voting, although it remains unclear how.

“Preventing a person from casting his vote falls in the purview of corrupt practices and is punishable by three years in jail and fine of rupees 5,000 ($50) or both,” Alam said. The result of a by-election in Batagram was declared null three years ago when few women participated having been threatened with divorce. They took part in the re-run at which the threat of divorce was not raised, he said.

Khalida Bibi a 39-year-old housewife from the northwestern town of Dargai said that she was hopeful that a tough election commission would have some impact. “My name was on the voters’ list for the 2002 and 2008 elections, but I couldn’t vote because on both occasions local people decided that women would not,” she said. “I hope I will succeed this time because the election commission has warned against any ban on women voting,” she added. —AFP

Malaysian youth pivotal in ‘social media’ election KUALA LUMPUR: Bukhairy Sofian is fed up with a ban on political activity at Malaysian universities, which he calls an outdated shackle on a tech-savvy younger generation yearning to express itself. So the 23-year-old, who heads a student group advocating academic freedom, plans to support the upstart opposition in May 5 elections expected to be the country’s closest yet.

“Today, youngsters can find out everything through their handphones. The youth have opened their eyes (to see) that they can change Malaysia for the better,” the political science student said. His vote is one small victory for the opposition in a battle to win over youths who are exposed as never before to alternative political views online and tipped as potential kingmakers in the election.

Malaysian youths have a history of political apathy blamed on the country’s relative prosperity, Asian respect for authority and the campus politics ban imposed in the 1970s to squelch radicalism. But more than five million of the 13.3 million registered voters are under the age of 40 - up 31 percent from previous 2008 polls-and over two million are first-time voters. “The Malay youth vote is critical,” said Ibrahim Suffian, head of polling group Merdeka Centre, referring to the Muslim Malays who make up about 55 percent of multi-ethnic Malaysia’s people.

He said high youth turnout could “dilute” support for the Barisan Nasional (National Front) coalition, which has ruled with a tight grip since independence in 1957 but faces a strong opposition vowing to end authoritarianism and graft. The Internet is the battleground in what premier Najib Razak in February called Malaysia’s “first social media election”. Malaysian Facebook users have surged from 800,000 during the 2008 polls to 13 million, or nearly half the country’s population of 28 million. They have among the world’s most extensive “friend” networks and also are prolific Twitter users.

A host of independent news sites also have emerged in recent years as political agenda-setters, with biting reports on alleged Barisan corruption and other abuses.

“The Internet is playing a central role in spreading information and sparking debates,” said Ooi Kee Beng of Singapore’s Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. “The young started thinking: This is our country. We can’t just leave it to the old guard. Maybe we know better.”

Denied access to government-controlled traditional media, the three-party opposition learned long ago to get its message out online in a country where smartphones are essential accoutrements. Campaigning heavily on the Web, it seized a third of parliament in 2008, tripling its share in its best showing ever, with prominent bloggers winning seats. “We lost the social media war.

We were almost not there (in 2008),” said deputy higher education minister Saifuddin Abdullah, a leading Barisan reform voice.

Since then, the opposition has ramped up its online presence, catering to the growing Internet news media and recently launching live streaming of press briefings and political rallies and a smartphone app to track campaign events. It has also has reached out to youths who surveys show are increasingly upset with the quality and cost of education, and with job prospects. It pledges to liberalize campuses, forgive some student debt and implement free primary-to-university education.

Scrambling to catch up, Najib, 59, who took office in 2009, is active on a Twitter account followed by more than a million users and has two Facebook pages and a blog. Najib lifted a decades-old ban on university students joining political parties last year, though political activity on campuses remains outlawed. He also is dangling student loan discounts and other youth handouts and has worked to project a young image, inviting fans to watch televised football matches together and appearing at recent pop concerts. —AFP

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International FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2013

Twitter security in crosshairs Hackers hijack AP account SAN FRANCISCO: A hijacked Associated Press Twitter account that rattled markets with false word of an attack on the White House put the security of social media in the crosshairs Wednesday. The stock market rebounded from the nosedive triggered Tuesday by the bogus tweet and the AP posted a message on Twitter that its account “which was suspended after being hacked, has been secured and is back up.”

The AP Twitter page indicated more than 1.8 million followers as of early evening in San Francisco, where the one-to-many messaging service has its headquarters. What remained were questions as to whether security was tight enough on Twitter and other popular social networks in an age when people increasingly turn to posts from friends or strangers for reliable news and information.

Twitter was firm that evaluating and improving defenses at the service remains an ongoing priority and that the hijacking of the AP account didn’t prompt any immediate moves to toughen security. AP’s Twitter account appeared to have been breached after hackers tricked someone into revealing a password with a deceptive email message in what is referred to as a “phishing” attack. Some online reports contended that Twitter was con-

sidering “two-factor authentication” that would require users to either know something or do something aside from just type in passwords to access accounts. “When you look at the problem in mass, the most critical thing we see is people just have horrendous passwords and use them all over the web,” said Mark Risher, chief and founder of Impermium, an Internet security firm. While incorporating a second step such as sending a confirmation code in a message to an email account or mobile phone associated with a user’s account is a big improvement, even that defense is flawed, he said.

Risher was ‘spam czar’ at Yahoo! Mail before leaving the Internet pioneer and launching Impermium in 2010. His team includes Sameer Bhalotra, a former senior director of cybersecurity for the White House. Phishing attacks are becoming increasingly sophisticated and convincing, sometimes with information harvested from social networks used to make pitches more personal and believable to specific targets, according to Risher. A person conned into giving hackers a password could just as easily be asked for a second bit of information needed to get into an account, he reasoned. “You really can’t just expect users to never get duped, because they always will,” Risher said.

“Service providers should never be satisfied with a password.” Adding multiple layers of security to get into accounts treads on the ease of using online services, forcing social networks to risk aggravating members. “There is a tradeoff between convenience and safety,” he said.

“It is like putting five deadlock bolts on the door. It would make you more secure but it really would be a hassle if you wanted to pop out to the corner store.” Impermium and other companies specialize in ways to spot “bad guys” who use stolen passwords to get into accounts. Signs watched for include whether an account is being accessed from a smartphone other than one typically used or if the visitor appeared to be trying to cover their tracks. Last month, Twitter arranged with major web email service providers Google, Yahoo! and AOL to reject emails claiming to be from Twitter if they didn’t have a special protocol that acts as a “handshake” of authenticity. The intent was to block phishing email messages from even reaching targets. Twitter maintained that it has a variety of ideas about hardening security but would not disclose details. “The answer is the service providers,” Risher said.

“Just like in the real world where a bank doesn’t say that once you make it past the door you can do whatever you want.”—AFP

Truth and consequences a dilemma for Twitter, users SAN FRANCISCO: Does Twitter have a credibility problem? For many, a single fake tweet from the Associated Press account that briefly roiled financial markets on Tuesday, driving the Dow Jones industrial average down about 145 points, vividly reaffirmed the fearsome, near-instantaneous power of the 140-character message. But the security lapse also revived doubts about Twitter’s place in the media landscape - and its ultimate value - at a moment when its status as one of today’s essential information networks had seemed all but cemented.

Just a week after social media networks took criticism for helping circulate misinformation about the alleged perpetrators of the Boston Marathon bombing, Twitter’s security shortcomings fell under a harsh spotlight Tuesday after a hacker group commandeered the AP Twitter account and falsely reported that explosions in the White House had injured President Barack Obama.

The AP was only the latest hacking victim in recent days after Twitter accounts belonging to National Public Radio, CBS 60 Minutes and others were breached. Last year, Reuters News was the victim of hackers who briefly took over one of its Twitter accounts and posted false tweets. The latest hack was by far the most significant: the single AP tweet stunned investors and effectively wiped out $136.5 billion of the S&P 500 index’s value in a matter of minutes.

Although the news agency later disclosed that one of its employees may have inadvertently given away company passwords as the result of a “phishing” attack by the hackers, security experts quickly faulted Twitter for its longstanding failure to implement two-factor authentication, a double-layered password feature used by the likes of Google Inc and Microsoft Inc that might have prevented the spate of high-profile Twitter hijackings. —Reuters

Ricin-laced letters leading to a Mississippi mystery TUPELO: Of three ricin-laced letters mailed this month to public officials, only one made it into the hands of an intended target, 80-year-old Mississippi judge Sadie Holland. Investigators are working to piece together what motivated someone to send the letters to her, President Barack Obama and US Sen Roger Wicker.

Holland is a common link between two men who have been investigated in the case. Holland presided over a 2004 assault case against Paul Kevin Curtis, an entertainer who had been the top suspect in the case until prosecutors dropped charges against him Tuesday. And her family has had political skirmishes with Everett Dutschke, the Tupelo man whose home and former place of business have been the subject of searches by investigators for two days this week. No charges have been filed against Dutschke. The judge’s son, Steve Holland, is a partner with her in the funeral home owned by the family. “I’ve often said she could sentence someone to hanging at the courthouse square at 12 noon and they’d say ‘Thank you, Miss Sadie,’ “Steve Holland said. The family is deep into Mississippi politics. Sadie Holland has been a Justice Court judge for 14 years. Steve is a state representative and his wife, Gloria, is mayor of the town of Plantersville.

Another of Sadie Holland’s sons, Billy Joe, is a member of the Lee County Board of Supervisors. Steve Holland said he believes his mother’s only encounter with Dutschke was at a 2007 rally in the town of Verona. Running as a Republican, Dutschke lost a lopsided election to Steve Holland that year. Holland said his mother called out Dutschke after he made a derogatory speech about the Holland family.

“She just got up and said ‘Sir, you will apologize. This is where I was born in Verona and we’ve been here five generations and you will apologize.’” Steve Holland said Dutschke altered a photo to make him look like the fictional Boss Hogg from the “Dukes of Hazzard” TV series, portraying Holland in a white suit and hat with a big cigar.

“He’d just go off on a tangent about ‘Boss Holland is a thief’ and ‘Boss Holland has been stealing from you people’ and ‘Boss Holland this’ and ‘Boss Holland that,’” Holland said.

Brandon Presley, Mississippi’s northern district public service commissioner and a distant cousin of Elvis Presley, attended the 2007 political rally in Verona. He told The Associated Press on Wednesday that he remembers Dutschke giving a “militant” speech with personal and professional attacks on Steve Holland. Presley, a Democrat, said he doesn’t recall details of the speech just the tone of it, and the crowd’s reaction. “I just remem-

in 2003. Holland sentenced Curtis to six months in the county jail. He served only part of the sentence, according to his brother.

Sadie Holland declined an interview with the AP. Steve Holland said his mother insists on opening her own mail at the court and called the Lee County sheriff after reading the threat and deciding the letter “didn’t smell right.” Holland said his mother has been trying to go

TUPELO: Federal agents wearing hazmat suits inspect the grounds around the house owned by Everett Dutschke, in connection with the recent ricin attacks, as one of his dogs howls in Tupelo, Miss. —AP ber everybody’s jaw dropping,” Presley said. He said he also remembers Sadie Holland chastising Dutschke afterward. Dutschke said his speech included sharp criticism of Steve Holland’s record in public office, but that Holland had overstated the incident. And he told the AP on Tuesday that he has no problem with Sadie Holland.

“Everybody loves Sadie, including me,” he said. Steve Holland said he doesn’t know if his mother remembers Curtis’ assault case. She was presiding judge in a case in which Curtis was accused of assaulting a Tupelo attorney

about her daily routine and ignore the hoopla, saying he saw her driving a tractor home about sundown one night this week. Instead of talking about the investigation, Holland said his mother wanted to talk about planting new grass in the family graveyard. “She’s fiercely independent,” Holland said. “Mother doesn’t want the FBI or anyone else here. She just wants life back to normal.”

Curtis, 45, was released from a north Mississippi jail Tuesday and charges against him were dropped, nearly a week after authorities charged him with sending the poi-

soned letters. By the time Curtis left jail, authorities had descended on Dutschke’s house in Tupelo and conducted a search that lasted for hours.

Dutschke told the AP on Wednesday morning that he and his wife had gone to a friend’s house because they didn’t feel safe at their home. “They ripped everything out of the house,” he said, adding: “I haven’t slept at all.”

Later Wednesday, dozens of investigators were searching a small retail space where neighboring business owners said Dutschke used to operate a martial arts studio.

Officers at the scene wouldn’t comment on what they were doing.

Investigators in gas masks, gloves and plastic suits emerged from the business carrying 5-gallon buckets full of items covered in large plastic bags. Once outside, others started spraying their protective suits with some sort of mist. Dutschke was seen outside the studio observing the search. Wednesday evening, hazmat teams packed up and left Dutschke’s business. A woman drove off in a green Dodge Caravan parked on the street that had been searched. Daniel McMullen, FBI special agent in charge in Mississippi, declined to speak with reporters afterward. Dutschke’s attorney, Lori Nail Basham, said Dutschke is “cooperating fully” with investigators and that no arrest warrant had been issued. Federal authorities have not said what led them to drop the charges against Curtis, and his lawyers say they’re not sure what new evidence the FBI has found. Curtis, who performs as Elvis and other celebrities, describes a bizarre, yearslong feud with Dutschke, who insists he had nothing to do with the letters. The two worked together at Curtis’ brother’s insurance office years ago, Curtis said. He said Dutschke told him he owned a newspaper and showed interest in publishing his book called “Missing Pieces,” about what Curtis considers an underground market to sell body parts. But Dutschke decided not to publish the material, Curtis said, and later began stalking him on the Internet. For his part, Dutschke said he didn’t even know Curtis that well. “He almost had my sympathy until I found out that he was trying to blame somebody else,” Dutschke said Monday. —AP

17

International FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2013

Venezuela president Maduro accused of ‘stealing’ election Capriles refuses to concede defeat

ROME: Italian leftist Enrico Letta answers journalists at the Quirinale presidential palace in Rome after his meeting with Italian President Giorgio Napolitano. —AFP

Italy’s Letta begins tricky coalition talks ROME: Italian moderate leftist Enrico Letta began complex talks yesterday on forming a new coalition government aimed at tackling what the prime minister-designate called a social “emergency”. The 46-year-old Letta-who would be one of Europe’s youngest leaders if he succeeds-has said he wants a government that is more in tune with the needs of ordinary Italians and that can steer away from harsh austerity measures. Silvio Berlusconi’s rightist People of Freedom party and outgoing Prime Minister Mario Monti’s centrist coalition have all said they will support his government. But the talks will be no easy ride between bickering political forces. Letta’s own Democratic Party is divided over the proposed alliance with Berlusconi, even though the 76-year-old scandal-tainted billionaire tycoon and former prime minister is not expected to be included in any new cabinet. His bulwark of support will be President Giorgio Napolitano, who nominated Letta on Wednesday and has urged politicians to set their differences aside and form as wide a coalition as possible to deal with urgent economic issues. Monti’s government has limped on since the former European commissioner handed in his resignation in December and remains in place until a Letta cabinet is formed, which most political analysts say will happen this week.

Monti was widely praised for his budget discipline and bold reforms abroad. But he came a distant fourth in a February general election after official figures showed the economy shrank and unemployment had risen under his rule. The elections were very narrowly won by a centre-left coalition led by the Democratic Party, with Berlusconi coming in a very close second after he promised to scrap an unpopular property tax implemented by Monti. A protest party led by former comedian Beppe Grillo came in third place, winning a quarter of the vote on promises to revolutionize society and crack down on a pervasive culture of political perks that has inflamed many Italians. Letta is relatively unknown internationally, although he has been a minister three times since the late 1990s. He is a former member of the European Parliament and worked at the Italian Treasury during its drive to adopt the euro. A web-savvy politician with his own blog and Twitter account, Letta is also a fluent speaker of English and French and part of a generation of Italian political leaders who have often been held back because considered too young. In comments posted on his blog Wednesday, he said he had been extremely surprised when he got the call from Napolitano. Amid increasing poverty and rising number of young people looking abroad, Italy has spent 50 days without a government, he wrote. “Italians are fed up,” he wrote. “They want answers.” Letta started out in the centre-right Christian Democratic party and his uncle Gianni Letta is a top Berlusconi ally, making him one of the few figures in Italy who can bridge a very disparate coalition. In a speech after receiving the nomination on Wednesday, Letta promised to boost employment, save businesses and act against rising poverty, as well as cutting the number of parliamentarians in order to reduce bureaucratic costs. —AFP

CARACAS: Venezuelan opposition leader Henrique Capriles, refusing to concede defeat, accused Nicolas Maduro’s government Wednesday of stealing the country’s recent presidential elections. “The truth-and it is as big as our country is wide-is that you stole the election. That is the truth. You stole this electoral process, and you have to explain that to this country and to the world,” a defiant Capriles told a news conference. Maduro, Hugo Chavez’s political heir, won the April 14 elections to replace the late leader by a very narrow 1.8 percent, according to the National Electoral Board.

But opposition members allege cases of fraud, claiming some voters cast multiple ballots or even used ballots belonging to people who had died.

Capriles demanded that the National Electoral Board begin reviewing the balloting process and electoral proceedings. He wants a full recount, which the board says is legally impossible. “We are giving you your deadline: it’s tomorrow.

We are not going to wait any more,” Capriles said in a nationally televised address. “You (the board) made a commitment to the Venezuelan people.

Well, I made a commitment to the Venezuelan people too.”

Maduro quickly returned fire on his Twitter account. “#DefeatingFascism We will not permit the Right to once again sabotage the life of a country with its hatred and desperation.

Firmness and Victory...” read one of his angry replies. “#TROOPS #TROOPS #TROOPS Charge forward with the Truth against the Fascism which is Threatening our Fatherland again.

Enough of threats already. Justice...” read another. The electoral board had

agreed last week to a partial review of ballots, yet all the while insisting that whatever the outcome, it would not, and could not, change the outcome of the election. The board also never said when the partial electoral review would begin.

dead and scores wounded.

In reaction to the cutoff, some Capriles supporters immediately started a pot-banging demonstration in some areas of Caracas. “So why is the (government) feed being piped in now? To keep people from hearing the truth?” Capriles

CARACAS: Venezuelan opposition leader Henrique Capriles speaks during a press conference in Caracas. —AFP The dispute over the election has plunged the South American OPEC member sitting atop the world’s largest proven crude reserves into political uncertainty. Just as Capriles challenged the government, television transmission of his speech was interrupted by mandatory government broadcasting on all TV and radio networks. The interruption showed video footage in which Capriles was blamed for unleashing post-electoral violence that left nine

asked, claiming the interruption was another clear sign of the government’s fear that the people would learn the truth. “The truth will make this government fall,” he added. “When the truth is out, this government will fall in a matter of minutes. They are trying to hold on (to power) with threats and persecution.” Political tensions had already soared earlier Wednesday when both the government and Capriles called massive street rallies for May 1. —AFP

Die-hard Dutch republicans target king’s enthronement THE HAGUE: While the Netherlands parties in gaudy orange as the new king takes the throne on April 30, a small group of defiant republicans will protest the monarchy’s very existence by wearing white. Anti-royalists are surprisingly few in a country that fancies itself as egalitarian but where the national color comes from the royal family’s name-the House of Orange-Nassau.

And in these economically sluggish times, they say it’s time for regime change from an overpaid and over-privileged family. “The monarchy is something from another century that no longer fits with democratic values,” Anjo Clement, head of the Netherlands Republican Association (NRG) said. His group, founded in 1998, says it has over 1,600 members. When Beatrix signs her abdication in favor of her son Willem-Alexander next week, the republicans will stage what they call a “good humored” protest in downtown Amsterdam, all dressed in white. “The white will contrast with the orange fever that is invading our country and it’s also a neutral color, uniting the hues of all political parties,” said Clement, who, failing abolishing the monarchy, wants at least to reduce their salaries. “He (Willem-Alexander) will earn more than 800,000 euros a year and not pay any tax, that’s not normal,” said the 67-year-old former civil servant. If his “citizens’ initiative” petition to reduce the king’s salary gets more than 40,000 signatures in the country of 17 million it will be debated in parliament.

While that petition has garnered 20,000 signatures in just over a week, another petition against the official King’s Song for the enthronement scored over 40,000 signatures in the space of a few

days. The song’s unlikely mix of rap and traditional music, combined with fawning regal lyrics was considered simply to be in bad taste in the image-obsessed Netherlands. Nevertheless, an opinion poll by Protestant daily Trouw published on Saturday said that three-quarters of the Dutch do not question the monarchy’s existence.

But when asked about the royal family’s importance to national identity, respondents placed the royals only in 10th place, below skating, national dishes such as pea soup and the national football team.

The royal party of the annual Queen’s Day tellingly came in at third place. Unbowed, Dutch republicans will protest next Tuesday, shouting “Ik Willem niet”, a play on the new king’s name that also translates from the Dutch as “I don’t want him.” Amsterdam authorities have learned the lesson of violent protests when Beatrix inherited the throne from her abdicating mother Julianna in 1980. Those protests, mainly against a housing crisis under the slogan “Geen woning, geen Kroning” (No Housing, No Crowning), saw 200 injured and a rubblestrewn Amsterdam compared to a war-zone. This time around, Amsterdam has offered six locations for protests on enthronement day. But, apparently proving that the Dutch are more inclined to party than demonstrate, just one of the locations have so far been booked.

The Dutch monarchy is relatively young, dating from Napoleon’s defeat in 1815, and its role has evolved since then. The monarch no longer has any role in the government’s formation, although he or she does meet with the prime minister once a week and must sign laws.

“It’s not right for someone who happens to be born into a certain family to have political power,” said Clement. —AFP

18

International FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2013

Asian housemaids fear for future amid Cyprus slump Having domestic workers now ‘a luxury’ NICOSIA: With recession-hit Cyprus facing an even deeper slump on the back of a draconian EU-IMF bailout, thousands of Asian housemaids, nannies and caregivers on the small Mediterranean island fear for their jobs and futures. For years, Filipina, Sri Lankan and Vietnamese women have been a status symbol in Cypriot homes, working six days a week, often for very long hours, in exchange for

will see their incomes reduced. So the luxuries of expensive cars, fancy holidays abroad and domestic help will become increasingly unaffordable.

Fely, a Filipina who has been working as a cleaner in offices and homes for the past five years, is already feeling the pinch. “They cut my work hours by half,” she said worriedly. “One of my part-time employers told me I should stop com-

NICOSIA: Indian women, working in Cyprus, walk towards Nicosia’s main bus station in the Cypriot capital’s Old City. With recession-hit Cyprus facing an even deeper slump on the back of a draconian EU-IMF bailout, thousands of Asian housemaids, nannies and caregivers on the small Mediterranean island fear for their jobs and futures. —AFP room, board and 330 euros ($430) a month.

The island’s overall unemployment is already around 15 percent and is expected to grow sharply this year and next, as GDP plunges a forecast 8.7 percent in 2013 and another 3.9 percent in 2014.

With the harsh austerity measures imposed by the deal to rescue Cyprus’s failing banks and bankrupt government, businesses will close, many people will lose their jobs and those who keep them

ing... They told me if they settle this problem about their money at the bank they will call me again.” She was referring to the fact that the bailout deal included a “haircut” on deposits above 100,000 euros, meaning some businesses and individual depositors will lose large amounts of capital.

Cypriot immigration officials say there are around 35,400 domestic workers in Cyprus, but with increasing pressure on big bank accounts and soaring unem-

ployment, some households are looking to share their “help.” “Domestic workers are considered to be a luxury for most of our citizens, so when you are in a financial crisis, the first thing that you need to cut is the luxury,” said Riginos Polydefkis, a senior immigration official.

For those who lose their jobs, the outlook is stark. To begin with, they have no right to unemployment compensation, and if they fail to find a new employer within 30 days of being laid off, they become illegal. Polydefkis said the number of domestic workers, which peaked in 2010, dropped by a thousand in 2012, and by another thousand in the past two months. “The number of domestic workers was more than the estimated needs, and I think that there is going to be a correction right now,” he said.

Fely said: “We need to find a job somewhere, but we don’t know where to go.”

She is married to a Romanian she met in Cyprus, where their daughter was born three years ago. He has lost his job and will return to Romania with their daughter, while Fely stays on in hope of a turnaround. Lynn is another Filipina. She has been laid off and is still looking for a new job. Her plight highlights another dilemma for these women-whether to stay on in Cyprus, taking ever more poorly paid and onerous jobs, if they can find them, or throwing in the towel and going home.

“If I go home, my children, 12 and 14, will drop from school because I will not be able to pay for them,” said Lynn, who suggested she might go to Turkish-occupied northern Cyprus, where some of her friends have found work. Doros Polykarpou, who works with KISA, an NGO offering support to migrant workers, spells out many of the problems these women face. “Many of these people still have to provide for their family, so they are not able to leave the island despite the difficulties,” and will be “willing to accept any condition at all in order to earn whatever money they can to support their families abroad.” —AFP

Three British Muslim men jailed for terror offenses LONDON: Three British Muslims, including a convert who was featured in a documentary about radical Islam and a former London police support officer, were jailed yesterday in London for traveling to Pakistan for terrorism training. Richard Dart, Imran Mahmood and Jahangir Alom pleaded guilty last month. Prosecutors said that in addition to traveling to Pakistan for training between 2010 and 2012, the trio went to extensive lengths to try to evade surveillance, discussed making explosives and referenced Wootten Bassett - which for years served as a military repatriation town - as a possible target. Dart, who had appeared in a BBC documentary that chronicled the efforts of his filmmaker stepbrother to understand why he had embraced an uncompromising form of Islam, refused to stand for sentencing Thursday at London’s Old Bailey Court. “I believe ruling and judging is only for Allah,” Dart, 30, told the court. Dart - a former BBC security guard who also featured in a YouTube video in which he criticized the British royal family, the marriage of Prince William to Kate Middleton and UK foreign policy - was jailed for six years. Alom, a 26-year-old former police support officer who appeared in an online video expounding hardline beliefs, was sentenced to four years. Mahmood, 22, received more than nine years. In sentencing, Judge Peregrine Simon told the three they

had “shown yourselves to be committed to acts of terrorism.” He said he did not think either Dart or Mahmood had ruled out an attack on the UK and that the latter was looking to arm himself with a bomb.

Deputy Asst Commissioner Stuart Osborne, from Scotland Yard’s counterterrorism command, said the three men were “clearly aware” of antisurveillance techniques and had expressed a desire to carry out terror attacks.

“These are dangerous men,” he said, noting that Mahmood had received terrorist training in Pakistan and suggested he had knowledge of how to make home-made explosives, while Dart and Alom made “great efforts” to travel to Pakistan and seek training from terrorist groups.” Prosecutor Mark Topping said that while the men did not identify any specific targets for an attack, “their determination and intent were very clear.” He said police had found high-explosive residue on Mahmood’s backpack when he was searched at an airport in 2010 after returning from Pakistan. Computer experts also retrieved text that Dart and Mahmood typed out on the laptop in front of them as they sat together and communicated, “presumably because they feared that any conversation would be overheard,” Topping added. The trio was arrested last July, shortly before the start of the London Olympics. —AP

China migrants rush home to help quake-hit families LUSHAN: Moments after the start of his daily grind as a construction worker in northern China, Xia Donghai’s world came crashing down with news that a terrifying earthquake had struck his hometown almost a thousand miles away. With all communications down in Lushan county in the southwestern province of Sichuan, Xia’s only way of knowing if his family had survived was to set off on an epic journey that would deliver either relief or tragedy.

“I am filled with terror, I do not know what I will find when I return to the family home,” he told AFP, barging his way uninvited into one of the few cars to get through a police roadblock on the edge of the disaster zone. “I have no other way, I must continue my journey,” he added, shutting the door defiantly behind him and sitting on the lap of a back-seat passenger, still in his work clothes and safety helmet, and in need of a wash. “I have tried to call my family hundreds of times but I get no response,” said the 48-year-old, frantic with worry in the hours after the disaster struck.

Xia is one of 230 million workers from China’s impoverished inland provinces who have left their families behind in search of a better wage in the booming coastal areas. Towns surrounding the epicenter of Saturday’s earthquake-which the US Geological Survey registered at magnitude 6.6 - were said by domestic media to be one of the major labour export areas in Sichuan. A teacher from Longmen townships’s Chenyang Hope Primary School told the China Daily that more than half of his 88 students were “left-behind children” the offspring of migrant workers, left in the care of relatives.

Endless rows of houses that lay collapsed on the tiny village roads across Lushan were populated by elderly residents and women, looking after frightened children. Yang Yue, a local official in Longmen said that there were many local families whose menfolk had left to work in other parts of China.

But he said the elderly, women and children were being supported by local relief agencies, and by the men who were returning in a steady stream following the quake, which has left at least 196 people dead.

“The vast majority of these migrant workers are returning home to help their families,” Yang said, though he did not have figures on how many households were without men when the disaster struck. Two women sitting outside a house in Longmen, tending a flame lit under a stove made from bricks that they had plucked from debris, said their husbands were working away. “We have no communications, so we don’t know if they are returning,” one said, as they sat with an elderly woman and two children on wooden stools next to a makeshift tent crafted from wooden poles and canvas.

The last time Xia had visited home was Lunar New Year in February, when he spent the national holidays with his wife, daughter, son-in-law and grandson, who live in the kind of traditional stone house common to the region. He said that he spent 1,300 yuan ($210) - a large chunk of his monthly salary of 3,000 yuan-to pay for a flight from his workplace in Hebei province, 900 miles away. Xia said the option of a far cheaper rail journey was out of the question, as he would have been racked with worry throughout the 27 hours it would have taken to arrive in the nearest major city, Chengdu.

Instead he took his first ever flight, and then hitch-hiked with emergency services from the Sichuan capital to Lushan, still clad in the heavy woollen jumper he wears in chilly northern China. From there he joined thousands of people who had lined the streets attempting to make their way into cars which had been given access into the earthquake zone by authorities. After climbing into a car, Xia believed he was on the final stretch to see his loved ones, but further road blocks and huge congestion further frustrated his efforts.

In the early hours in the busy centre of Lushan, he pleaded with a group of motorcyclists to take him home, his voice breaking as he tried to make himself heard above the roar of power generators in a town without electricity. While rescue workers and media were often taken on the back of bikes, it appeared to be more difficult for a poor scaffold worker to complete the last few miles home. “Stay safe,” he said to AFP, as he ran off into the darkness of Lushan’s unlit streets, seeking to bargain a ride with little more than the currency of his tragic tale. The fate of his family remains unknown. —AFP

Business FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2013

Britain avoids triple-dip recession

IMF, ECB square off in austerity debate PAGE 20

PAGE 20

MADRID: People queue outside an office to register for job placement in Madrid, Spain yesterday. Spain’s National Statistics Institute said the country’s unemployment rate shot up to a record 27.2 percent in the first quarter of 2013 taking the total to 6.2 million. — AP

Spain joblessness hits new high Unemployment jumps 27.2%, tops 6 million MADRID: Unemployment in Spain jumped to a record 27.2 percent, data showed yesterday, fuelling a European debate over whether to ditch austerity policies and switch to reviving economic growth. More than 6 million Spaniards were out of work in the first three months of this year, raising the rate in the euro zone’s fourth biggest economy to a level unseen since records began in the 1970s.

Joblessness has grown for seven quarters in a row, leaving more Spaniards without work than the entire population of Denmark, and the percentage rate now matches that of Greece, which is in the grips of a full-blown depression. Spain has slipped in an out of recession for the past five years. In the first quarter more businesses and individuals went into bankruptcy and default, further driving up bad loan rates in Spain’s troubled banking system and hitting profits at three of the country’s top five lenders, Santander, Caixabank and Sabadell.

The grim economic picture contrasts sharply with financial markets. There, waves of liquidity from around the globe have brought down Spain’s borrowing costs and all but banished last year’s fears that a budget crisis would force Madrid to seek a international sovereign bailout. “These figures are worse than expected and highlight the serious situation of the Spanish economy as well as the shocking decoupling between the real and the

financial economy,” strategist at Citi in Madrid Jose Luis Martinez said. On the markets, yields on Spain’s 10-year bond fell this week to their lowest level since late 2010.

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy imposed drastic spending cuts and tax increases last year, trying to bring a huge budget deficit under control, in line with the euro zone’s policy of fighting its debt crisis with austerity.

However, the belt-tightening has aggravated the Spanish economy’s problems. With the entire euro zone heading into a second year of recession, top EU economics official Olli Rehn and his boss European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso have begun to push for more flexibility on public deficits.

Others, including European Central Bank policymakers, disagree, saying easing up on austerity would not mean economic recovery.

Nevertheless, senior sources said the ECB is closer to lowering interest rates than at any time since it last cut them in July 2012, and is likely to shave a quarter percentage point off its main rate next week. Spain’s weak economy is hurting even the likes of Santander, the euro zone’s biggest bank. Santander reported a 26 percent drop in its net profit on the quarter, citing the prolonged recession, low interest rates and the need to set aside more capital to cover rising bad loans.

Rajoy has tried for months to tread a line between the pro-austerity and pro-growth

camps, saying Spain would always be disciplined on spending but indicating that his next round of measures, to be announced today, would lean more to stimulating small business growth than short-term cost cuts.

Given this tight-rope act, few economists believe Rajoy’s new measures will be ambitious enough to restart the ailing economy and create jobs.

EMBITTERED PUBLIC Rajoy’s budget cuts, along with corruption scandals, have embittered the public and protests have become commonplace. Police arrested four people in Madrid before dawn yesterday on accusations of trying to set fire to a bank. Demonstrators plan to march on parliament at 1500 GMT to protest against Rajoy’s economic policy and the cost of a 41.5 billion euro bailout of Spanish banks that will fall on taxpayers. Most banks reported that non-performing loans rose in the quarter as unemployed Spaniards continue to default on their mortgages and other credit, and companies go under.

Sabadell, Spain’s fifth biggest bank, said the financial situation was highly unstable and complex due to a weak economy, low interest rates and financial sector reform. In another sign of growing concerns about the economy, banking and official sources said the Bank of Spain was preparing new rules that could

force lenders to recognize bad corporate debts that have until now been classified as sound. Most Spanish companies are currently cut off from regular loan financing, a situation that has fuelled a sharp increase in bankruptcies in the first quarter of the year.

Hundreds of other firms are shutting down or leaving Spain, such as French electronics retailer Darty, while the country’s biggest employers are making mass layoffs.

Airline Iberia, international telecoms group Vodafone and Madrid’s public television station Telemadrid all announced plans to cut thousands of jobs in the first part of this year.

Youth unemployment has soared to 57 percent and Spain’s population fell last year for the first time on record as young people and immigrants who came to Spain to work in the once booming construction industry, flee the crisis.

Analysts say the most troubling statistic is that almost a third of jobless have been out of work for more than two years. Also, two million Spanish households have no one earning a wage. “More than half Spain’s unemployed have very low levels of education and skill levels and that, combined with several years of unemployment, is the biggest risk to recovery in Spain,” said Marcel Jansen at Madrid-based think tank Fedea. “How on earth are we going to reemploy more than 3 million low educated people? This is a big question mark.” — Reuters

Business FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2013

Britain avoids triple-dip recession LONDON: Britain’s economy dodged a return to recession and grew faster than expected in the first three months of this year, providing some political relief for a government under fire over its austerity drive. The Office for National Statistics said Britain’s gross domestic product rose 0.3 percent in the first quarter, well above forecasts for a 0.1 percent rise.

The economy shrank 0.3 percent quarter-on-quarter in late 2012, so a second contraction would have put Britain into its third recession in less than five years. Year-on-year, the latest GDP reading was 0.6 percent higher, the strongest rise since the end of 2011. Finance minister George Osborne said yesterday’s data was encouraging and vowed to stay the course on fixing Britain’s budget problems.

“We all know there are no easy answers to problems built up over many years, and I can’t promise the road ahead will always be smooth, but by continuing to confront our problems head on, Britain is recovering and we are building an economy fit for the

future,” he said in a statement. Sterling hit its highest level in two months against the dollar after the data and British government bond prices fell.

Britain’s preliminary GDP figures are one of the first for a major advanced economy, and based mostly on estimated data, but it would be rare for a reading this high to be revised down into negative territory.

The rise was driven by strong services sector growth and a bounce-back in North Sea oil and gas output.

Politically, a slip back into recession would have been difficult for the government in general and Osborne in particular, coming just days after ratings agency Fitch stripped Britain of its top-notch credit rating. Osborne is sticking to his commitment to eliminate Britain’s underlying budget deficit in five years, betting that growth will pick up in time for a national election in May 2015 despite sluggish expansion forecast to be just 0.6 percent this year.

But the International Monetary Fund - previously supportive of Britain’s approach to deficit reduction thinks some cuts may need to be

deferred given the weakness in demand. An IMF mission visits Britain next month for an assessment of the country’s economy that could include recommendations for a change of course. The stronger-than-expected reading may help Osborne when he tries to convince the IMF that Britain’s economy is on track for recovery, and that he is right to stick with his current plans.

PITFALLS AHEAD Analysts warn of a broader problem of stagnation that has led some to warn that Britain risks a Japanese-style ‘lost decade of near-zero growth.

Britain’s GDP remains 2.6 percent below its peak in the first quarter of 2008 and even with yesterday’s data, has stagnated for the past 18 months.

Rob Wood, an economist at Berenberg Bank, said a recovery appeared to be on the horizon but pitfalls lay ahead.

“The economy seems to have done a little better than the main surveys suggested but it is hardly a picture of rude health right now,” he said. “We suspect there will be another couple of

disappointing quarters to get through before the UK can see a return to sustainable growth.” Britain has been much slower to recover from the financial crisis than most other big economies. Weak demand from a recession-hit euro zone, a drag from the government’s deficit-reduction measures and high inflation eating into meagre wage rises are all to blame.

Furthermore, the global economy is weakening and there are signs of slowing growth in the United States and China.

Britain’s government and the Bank of England are making some efforts to boost growth without requiring more public spending, including seeking to expand bank lending. The first-quarter rise in output was driven by a broadbased increase in services output, building on a strong January, with the motor trade particularly strong.

Industrial output was lifted by the biggest rise in the mining and quarrying sector since 2002, as some North Sea oil and gas fields came back on line after lengthy maintenance that depressed output in 2012. — Reuters

World shares gain

IMF, ECB square off in austerity debate

Dollar under pressure from disappointing US data

LONDON: A heated debate about Europe’s austerity drive flared back into life yesterday with leading IMF and European Central Bank officials sharply at odds and Angela Merkel declaring that Germany required higher interest rates. With the threat of the currency bloc’s break-up receding, some euro zone officials are saying now is the time to throttle back on debt-cutting drives because calmer financial markets will not react badly.

The International Monetary Fund is also pushing that prescription - for both the euro zone and Britain - but Germany and the ECB are opposed. “There is ... a risk that Europe could fall into stagnation, which would have very serious implications for households, companies, banks and other bedrock institutions,” IMF First Deputy Managing Director David Lipton told a conference in London.

“To decisively avoid that dangerous downside, policymakers must act now to strengthen the prospects for growth,” he said. But at the same conference, the Economist’s Bellwether Europe Summit, ECB Executive Board member Joerg Asmussen urged governments to push on with budget consolidation and reforms. “Delaying fiscal consolidation is not an easy way out. If it were, we would have taken it,” Asmussen said.

“Delaying fiscal consolidation is no free lunch. It means higher debt levels. And this has real costs in the euro area where public debts are already very high,” he said. The ECB is expected to cut interest rates next week, although a quarterpoint reduction is unlikely to lift the euro zone economy out of recession. “It will probably require additional unconventional measures from the ECB,” Lipton said, while Asmussen said monetary policy was not an “all-purpose weapon”.

Further clouding the debate, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said if monetary policy were set for her country alone, rates would have to rise. “The ECB is in a difficult position. For Germany it would actually have to raise rates slightly at the moment, but for other countries it would have to do even more for more liquidity to be made available,” she said at a banking conference, in an unusually outspoken comment on central bank policy. Survey evidence this week suggested even the German economy is struggling, however, and its economy ministry forecast growth of just 0.5 percent this year.

Rhetoric aside, the EU is expected next month to give struggling countries like France and Spain longer to meet their deficit-cutting targets. European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso has said austerity had reached its natural limits of popular support and the bloc’s economics czar, Olli Rehn, said the pace of debt-cutting was slowing. —Reuters

LONDON: Surprisingly strong British growth lifted sterling yesterday, while world shares rose for a fifth day as a recent run of weak data from other major economies raised expectations of looser central bank policies. US stock index futures signaled that Wall Street would start firmer as well, although a flurry of major corporate earnings could influence sentiment.

The British economy grew by 0.3 percent in the first three months of 2013, beating forecasts of a 0.1 percent increase, as gross domestic product avoided a second successive quarter of decline that would have marked a formal return to recession. Year-on-year, Britain’s GDP expanded by 0.6 percent in the first quarter, its strongest performance since the end of 2011, sending the pound up nearly one percent to a two-month high of $1.5414.

“The markets expected a moderate return to growth, and sterling had appreciated ahead of the announcement. But such a strong rebound promptly sent it skywards,” said Chris Redfern, senior dealer at foreign exchange traders Moneycorp. Sterling rose 1.2 percent against the dollar to $1.5450 , its strongest level since Feb. 20, as the GDP figures lessened the likelihood of the Bank of England opting for more quantitative easing. The yield on 10-year gilts also rose 3 basis points to 1.72 percent.

Britain’s top share index the FTSE100, was little changed after the data, which traders saying was largely due to the fact that a large proportion of big British firms generate revenues overseas. Downbeat earnings weighed on the market yesterday, with drugmaker AstraZeneca off 2.6 percent, leading the decliners after its sales dropped by a bigger-than-expected 13 percent in the first quarter as patent expiries took a heavy toll.

TOKYO: A man looks at an electronic stock board of a securities firm in Tokyo yesterday. Asian stocks rose yesterday as mixed US corporate earnings and a slump in orders for US durable goods convinced investors that central banks would continue efforts to help the global economic recovery. — AP ECB RATE CUT The strong British data went against a recent disappointing run of economic news from Germany, China and the United States which has fuelled speculation about central bank action. Senior sources have told Reuters that momentum is building for monetary action to help the recession-hit euro zone and the European Central Bank is likely to cut interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point next week.

Those expectations of an ECB rate cut have lifted European shares back towards their 2013 highs over the past week and kept the euro near a three-week low to the dollar. Yesterday the FTSE Eurofirst 300 index index of top European shares was up 0.5 percent at 1,198.50 points and close to the 1,209.05 peak hit in midMarch. Frankfurt’s DAX was 0.7 percent higher and the Paris CAC-40 rose 0.25 percent. MSCI’s world equity index had

gained 0.5 percent to 346.75 points and was edging back towards its high of for the year of 366.58, hit two weeks ago.

The euro was up 0.4 percent to $1.3070 despite the ECB rate cut talk, moving away from a low of $1.2954 recorded on Wednesday after a German survey of business morale was weaker than expected.

Yields on Italian and Spanish bonds turned higher yesterday as investors took profits after a recent rally, leaving the Italian 10-year yield up 13 basis points at 4.13 percent. Spain’s equivalent bond yield rose 14 basis points on the day to 4.43 percent.

The dollar was weak, easing 0.6 percent against a basket of major currencies, following news on Wednesday of the biggest drop for seven months in orders for longlasting US manufactured products. Against the yen it had dropped 0.4 percent to around 99.10 yen. — Reuters

21

Business FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2013

Oil steady above $101, rally runs out of steam LONDON: Brent crude oil prices held above $101 a barrel yesterday, although skepticism set in that Wednesday’s rally would be sustained as traders focused on the weak outlook for global demand and rising supply. Recent disappointing data from Europe and top oil consumers the United States and China have stoked worries about global demand for oil, dragging down prices by more than 5 percent since the start of April and fuelling speculation about supply cuts.

By 0847 GMT, Brent crude was off 12 cents at $101.61 a barrel.

The move lower reversed a small rally in Asian trading after betterthan-expected South Korean growth data. South Korea’s economy expanded in the first quarter at its fastest pace in two years, but customs figures, which measure the value of exports, painted a less rosy picture.

US crude was up 17 cents at $91.60 a barrel. Analysts said doubts were creeping back into the market after a short-lived rally late on Wednesday that followed the weekly US crude oil and products data. This continued into yesterday’s Asian trading session, but the market turned lower after London traders arrived at their desks.

“The market is questioning yesterday’s rally and whether it was really justified,” said Bjarne Schieldrop, chief commodity analyst at SEB. “There was some support at the start of the day from the South Korean numbers. This is seen as the canary in the coal mine because of its industrial orders as it produces so many components.

But it looks as if that first-quarter growth was more to do with frontloaded government spending.” Brent pushed to an intraday high of $102.22 in Asian trading, its highest level since April 15, helped by a sharp drop in weekly US gasoline stocks on Wednesday.

Gasoline inventories fell 3.9 million barrels week-on-week, according to data from the US Energy Information Administration, compared with analysts’ expectations for a smaller decline of 200,000 barrels. But analysts cautioned against a bullish interpretation of the data. “The drop in gasoline stocks was driven by lower refinery production, not just an increase in demand,” said Carsten Fritsch, an oil analyst at Commerzbank in Frankfurt. “If you look at the seasonal pattern, it isn’t unusual for gasoline stocks to fall at this time of year, so I wouldn’t read too much into it.” Fritsch was also dismissive of the notion that a rate cut by the European Central Bank would boost oil demand - something that has helped support the market. The ECB is expected to shave a quarter-point off interest rates at its policy meeting next week. “I don’t see why oil demand should benefit from that,” Fritsch said. “Maybe it will boost investor demand, but investor demand has not benefited at all from the most recent monetary stimulus in Japan and the United States. So why should a marginal ECB rate cut do that?”

WEAK ECONOMIC OUTLOOK Analysts and traders said the technical picture remained bearish, pointing to weak global demand growth and abundant supplies from the North Sea, the Middle East and North Africa. At least nine May cargoes have been moved forward in the North Sea Forties crude program after stronger-than-expected output from Britain’s Buzzard oilfield, the biggest contributor to the Forties stream. In addition, production from Iraq, Libya and the United States continues to rise, raising questions as to whether Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates will have to cut their output. —Reuters

Gold up to 10-day high Russia, Turkey raise gold reserves LONDON: Gold climbed to its highest in 10 days yesterday, boosted by a weaker dollar, firm prices in other commodities and by an ninth straight session supported by demand for the physical metal. Traders also cited support from central bank buying after International Monetary Fund data showed that Russia and Turkey had continued to add to their holdings in March.

But daily outflows from exchange-traded funds showed no sign of abating, suggesting that sagging investor confidence is unlikely to be restored any time soon after last week’s sell-off. Spot gold hit a high of $1,447.66 an ounce earlier in the session, its highest since April 15, before it posted its biggest ever daily drop in dollar terms. It stood at $1,446.46 an ounce by 0943 GMT, up 1.1 percent. US gold for June delivery rose 1.6 percent to $1,446.10 an ounce.

“Physical demand is very strong at these prices, but a lot of the rally that we are seeing is also short-covering coming through,” Standard Bank analyst Walter de Wet said. Short-covering occurs when traders are forced to buy an asset they had agreed to sell at a future date in expectations its price would fall. “We could go through $1,450, but it may be difficult to sustain that level as we continue to see, when the United States comes in, a bit of selling pressure,” de Wet said. “The weaker dollar may be helping, but the historical inverse correlation between the currency and gold has been patchy in the past few days.” The dollar was weaker against the euro and yen, hurt by a batch of soft data that have raised concerns about the pace of economic recovery in the United States.

A weaker greenback makes dollar-priced assets such as gold cheaper for holders of other currencies. European shares were little changed after four straight sessions of gains, due to disappointing earnings reports, while copper hit a one-week high, and crude oil was steady above $101 per barrel.

The market awaited a string of other significant economic data in the United States, where softness would raise hopes that the Federal Reserve will keep its bond-buyng

program through 2014. Accommodative monetary policies favor gold, because low interest rates encourage investors to put money into non-interest-bearing assets.

“We have a few figures coming up - initial jobless claims and more importantly GDP which will be closely monitored,” Marex Spectron said in a note. “In the absence of anything damaging, I would expect gold to remain supported, but with the upside lim-

plunge in prices this month that shocked ardent gold investors and bulls. Gold had come under pressure earlier this month after the European Central Bank and IMF asked Cyprus to sell reserves to raise around 400 million euros ($523 million) as part of a bailout deal, leading to speculation other indebted euro zone countries could follow suit.

Meanwhile, physical demand has

HONG KONG: Picture shows a $1198 (9300 HKD) 24 carat gold plated custom-built 16gb iPad (top center), a $644 (5000 HKD) Swarovsky crystal encrusted external telephone handset (bottom center) and $383 (2980 HKD) crystal encrusted iPad cases in a display case at customized luxury goods store in Hong Kong. Customers usually pay about double the price of the gadget to create their own bespoke electronic devices, choosing from 40 different colors and designs. Prices could go even higher if the design comes with diamonds or gold. —AFP ited for the time being.”

ETFS SELL, CENTRAL BANKS BUY Holdings of the largest gold-backed ETF, New York’s SPDR Gold Trust, dropped a further 0.38 percent on Wednesday from Tuesday to their lowest since late 2009.

Russia and Turkey raised their gold reserves in March, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said on Wednesday, which was ahead of the spectacular

helped gold bounce from a two-year trough of $1,321.35 an ounce hit last week. Premiums for gold bars soared to multi-year highs in Asia on low supplies, with dealers in top consumer India expecting a surge in imports this month. Among other precious metals, silver rose 1 percent to $23.36 an ounce, platinum gained 1.6 percent at $1,448.24 an ounce, while palladium was up 1.3 percent to $673.97 an ounce. —Reuters

Dubai lender Emirates NBD profit jumps 31% DUBAI: Emirates NBD, Dubai’s largest bank by market value yesterday said its firstquarter net profit rose 31 percent on the back of lower impairments, beating the average forecast of analysts. The lender, 55.6-percent owned by state fund Investment Corp of Dubai, made a net profit of 837 million dirhams ($227.9 million) in the three months to March 31, compared to 641 million dirhams in the same period last year.

An average of three analysts polled by Reuters had forecast a net profit of 676 million dirhams. Bad loan provisions for the opening quarter stood at 888 million dirhams, down from the 1.1 billion

dirhams which the bank recorded in the same three months of last year. The lender was hit hard by impairment allowances in the latter half of 2011 and the first six months of 2012, which dragged down profits. Its exposure to indebted Dubai state-linked entities was among the main reasons for this.

Both net interest income and noninterest income were broadly the same year-on-year during the first quarter of 2013, with the former slipping 2 percent to 1.75 billion dirhams and the latter dipping 3 percent to 882 million dirhams. Loans and advances stood at 220.6 billion dirhams at the end of March, up 1 percent

on the end of 2012. Chief Executive Rick Pudner, who the bank confirmed earlier this week will leave the post at the end of this year, in January forecast 5 percent loan growth in 2013.

Meanwhile, deposits increased 4 percent on the end of last year to 223 billion dirhams. In December, ENBD announced it would buy the Egyptian business of French lender BNP Paribas for $500 million in a first step towards diversifying beyond its Dubai base. ENBD priced a $750 million subordinated bond in March, an offer which was expected to help repay part of the 12.6 billion dirhams which the bank received from the government in 2008 as

part of wide-ranging support for United Arab Emirates banks during the global financial crisis.

The bank said in January it was looking to begin repaying the debt, which was converted into capital boosting bonds in late 2009, as the value of the instruments has diminished and access to finance from the market has become cheaper. However, it has yet to announce a payment. The bank’s total capital adequacy ratio declined 0.9 percentage point in the first quarter to 19.7 percent, because of an increase in risk-weighted assets and the payment of dividends for 2012, the statement added. —Reuters

22

Business FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2013

Petchem shares weigh on Saudi stock market Gloom over Saudi petchem sector may be overdone DUBAI: Pessimism over Saudi Arabia’s petrochemical industry has pushed shares in the sector down sharply, dampening the biggest Arab stock market. But the gloom may be overdone, creating chances to buy into some of the kingdom’s biggest firms. The sector’s net income slid 18 percent from a year earlier to 8.0 billion riyals ($2.1 billion) in the first quarter of this year, Riyadh-based NCB Capital calculated this week after the companies announced earnings.

Even worse, global oil prices have dropped sharply since the start of this month. That threatens to pull down petrochemical product prices later this year, hurting firms’ bottom lines. This matters for the entire Saudi stock market, because petrochemical shares account for roughly a third of its total capitalization.

But a closer look at the outlook for petrochemical earnings suggests it is not so grim, many institutional analysts and investors argue - meaning the market could rebound quickly if oil prices stabilise in coming weeks. A collapse of demand for Saudi petrochemical output is not on the cards, said Faisal Potrik, analyst at Riyad Capital, who is keeping a “buy” rating on Saudi Basic Industries Corp (SABIC), the world’s biggest petrochemicals group.

“Demand is still there, especially out of Asia - that’s going to cushion and has been cushioning the impact of any decline in the West,” he said.

RETAIL SELLING Heavy selling of petrochemical shares by retail investors has pushed the sector index down 4.8 percent this month, leav-

ing the overall Saudi market flat. Saudi Arabia is far underperforming most Gulf markets; Dubai, which is not directly exposed to the petrochemical industry, is up 12 percent this month.

There has been plenty of bad news to alarm investors. SABIC said last week that it would cut about 1,050 jobs in Europe and close some operations there because of weak demand on the continent.

Demand is stronger in the United States but the revolution in extracting natural gas there is strengthening some of the Saudi companies’ competitors, by reducing the cost of the gas they use as feedstock.

Meanwhile, the price of Brent crude oil has tumbled 8 percent this month to its lowest level since mid-2012.

Petrochemical prices have held up well so far this year - ethylene was around $1,490 a ton in the first quarter, up 16 percent from the previous quarter - but they could drop if oil prices stay at current levels, since in the long term the markets are closely related. SABIC announced last week that its net profit sank 10 percent from a year earlier in the first quarter, while sales shrank 3.3 percent. It warned that growth would probably not improve until next year.

BETTER THAN EXPECTED But there are signs that petrochemical firms’ plight is not as bad as some investors are assuming. Although firstquarter profits dropped at many Saudi producers, most actually beat analysts’ consensus forecasts, except for when company-specific factors were involved,

said Amer Khan, fund manager at Shuaa Asset Management in Dubai. In fact, much of the drop in the sector’s profits during the first quarter was due to shutdowns of facilities for maintenance and emergencies - events that did not indicate weakness in the firms’ core business.

PetroRabigh, for example, posted a 658.1 million riyal net loss in the quarter, against a year-earlier profit of 115.8 million riyals - but the loss was due to an unexpected disruption of power and steam supplies from an outside provider. This forced PetroRabigh to halt operations.

Concern that SABIC’s European layoffs are a sign of things to come may also be overblown. Announcing first-quarter earnings, the firm’s chief executive Mohamed al-Mady described Europe as a “special case” and said he was optimistic about growth in China improving, while the U.S. construction market - a major source of demand for SABIC’s products - was recovering.

Potrik at Riyad Capital forecast SABIC’s earnings per share would rise to 8.75 riyals this year from 8.26 last year, meaning the stock, which closed Wednesday at 91.25 riyals, is trading at an inexpensive 10.7 times projected 2013 earnings. He has a target price of 120 riyals for the stock. NCB Capital has a target of 120.5 riyals for SABIC shares. “We expect the sector’s earnings to improve in the next quarters of 2013 as most of the shutdowns ended in 1Q13,” it said, predicting petrochemical product prices would remain “broadly flat” this year - not a strong performance, but not as bad as many investors have been fearing. —Reuters

HANOVER: Picture shows the camera of a streetview car, used to photograph whole streets, on the Google street view stand at the world’s biggest high-tech fair, the CeBIT in the northern German city of Hanover. —AFP

Google pays CEO a buck, other execs get $124 m SAN FRANCISCO: Google CEO Larry Page and his longtime partner Sergey Brin limited their salaries to $1 apiece last year, while four other top executives received combined compensation packages totaling more than $124 million. The breakdown disclosed in a regulatory filing Wednesday consisted mostly of stock awards that could ultimately be worth more or less money, depending on how Google’s stock price fares in the future. Google Inc also paid all four of the executives besides Page and Brin their maximum bonuses to reward them for their accomplishments during a year that saw the Internet search leader’s stock price and earnings rise by 10 percent from 2011.

Page and Brin, who co-founded Google in 1998, have capped their salaries to $1 since the company went public in 2004.

It’s a symbolic gesture that other top Silicon Valley executives such as Apple Inc’s late CEO Steve Jobs, and Yahoo Inc co-founder Jerry Yang have made after amassing fortunes through the stock that they held in their respective companies. Page, 40, and Brin, 39, are Google’s two biggest stockholders, with stakes that are each currently worth about $20 billion. Meanwhile, other Google executives are still looking to build their fortunes. Last year’s biggest windfall went to Nikesh Arora, who oversees the advertising sales that generated most of Google’s $50 billion in revenue last year. —AP

FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2013

THEY ARE THE 99!

99 Mystical Noor Stones carry all that is left of the wisdom and knowledge of the lost civilization of Baghdad. But the Noor Stones lie scattered across the globe - now little more than a legend. One man has made it his life’s mission to seek out what was lost. His name is Dr. Ramzi Razem and he has searched fruitlessly for the Noor Stones all his life. Now, his luck is about to change - the first of the stones have been rediscovered and with them a special type of human who can unlock the gem’s mystical power. Ramzi brings these gem - bearers together to form a new force for good in the world. A force known as ... the 99!

THE FASCINATING STORY OF THE 99 The Story So Far: Jabbar, Raheema, and Wakila travel to an Ethiopian city, where a series of thefts is being blamed on a man who feeds hyenas. The hyena man denies this, and Wakila convinces him to help the group find the real thief...

The 99 ® and all related characters ® and © 2013, Teshkeel Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

www.the99.org

Visit the99kids.com for free games featuring THE 99!

Opinion FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2013

Iran’s unlikely Al-Qaeda ties: murky, deteriorating

By Myra MacDonald

W

hen Al-Qaeda leader Ayman AlZawahiri spoke in an audio message broadcast to supporters earlier this month, he had harsh words for Iran.

Its true face, he said, had been unmasked by its support for Syrian President Bashar AlAssad against fighters loyal to Al-Qaeda. Yet it is symptomatic of the peculiar relationship between Tehran and Al-Qaeda that in the same month Canadian police would accuse “Al-Qaeda elements in Iran” of backing a plot to derail a passenger train.

Shiite Muslim Iran and strict Sunni militant group Al-Qaeda are natural enemies on either side of the Muslim world’s great sectarian divide. Yet intelligence veterans say that Iran, in pursuing its own ends, has in the past taken advantage of Al-Qaeda fighters’ need to shelter or pass through its territory.

It is a murky relationship that has been fluid and, say some in the intelligence community, has deteriorated in recent years.

“I wouldn’t even call it a marriage of convenience. It’s an association of convenience,” said Richard Barrett, former head of counterterrorism for Britain’s MI6 Secret Intelligence Service and later head of the UN Security Council’s monitoring team maintaining the world body’s Al-Qaeda and Taleban sanctions blacklists. “It’s not a strategic alliance.

An Al-Qaeda presence may suit the Iranians because it allows them to keep an eye on them, it gives them leverage in the form of people who are akin to hostages,” he added.

“There has been a lot of travel between Iraq and Pakistan and I cannot imagine the Iranians are not aware of that,” he said. But it was unlikely that Iran would take the risk of actively collaborating with Al-Qaeda against North America: “I don’t think the Iranians would take it kindly if it turned out that there had been plotting by Al-Qaeda on their territory.”

Canadian police have said there was no sign the plot had been sponsored by the Iranian state. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said AlQaeda’s beliefs were in no way consistent with Tehran’s. As yet, many details of the alleged plot remain unclear. However, a US government source cited a network of AlQaeda fixers based in the Iranian city of Zahedan, close to the borders of both Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The source said they served as gobetweens, travel agents and financial intermediaries for Al-Qaeda operatives and cells operating in Pakistan and moving through the area. Another Western source suggested that with relations deteriorating between Iran and Al-Qaeda over the civil war in Syria, Tehran had acted recently to stop fighters crossing through from Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) to join Islamist militants fighting to overthrow Assad.

“Although the relationship between Iran and Al-Qaeda has always been strained, this worsened after 2011 when the two sides lined up on opposite sides in the Syrian civil war,” said Shashank Joshi, a researcher at the Royal United Services Institute think-tank in London. “Syria’s strongest rebel group is allied to Al-Qaeda, and both have sharply

criticized Iranian support for the Assad regime.” It is unclear whether the planning for the alleged Canadian plot, which Canadian police said had been in the works for some time, was carried out before Syria’s war deepened the strain between Tehran and Al-Qaeda.

“There has been a loosening of the ties,” said Barrett, noting that documents released after US forces caught and killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in 2011 showed the AlQaeda leader saying he was not able to trust the Iranians at all. “Since then we have Zawahri castigating Iran quite recently. So clearly something had gone wrong.”

IRANIAN CONTROL FAR FROM CLEAR If indeed the Al-Qaeda network was based in and around Zahedan - which lies on the main road to Pakistan and is the capital of Sistan-Baluchestan province - it is far from clear how easy it would be for Iran to control. The region is home to a toxic mix of drug smuggling, illicit trade and gun-running by insurgents. Afghan refugees long ago crowded into poor neighborhoods on the outskirts of Zahedan,

although Iran, like Pakistan, periodically tries to push them out, arguing they are a security risk.

Iranian authorities have also been battling a Sunni insurgency of their own in recent years by ethnic Baloch complaining of discrimination. The Jundollah group has claimed several attacks including a bombing that killed 42 people in 2009 - there is no sign it is linked to Al-Qaeda, though it is often confused with a Pakistan-based group of the same name. At the same time, on the Pakistan side of the border, Pakistani security forces are fighting an insurgency by secular Baloch separatists, while al-Qaeda linked militants in the Sunni sectarian Lashkar-eJhangvi group have carried out a string of attacks against the Shiite population there.

PRAGMATIC APPROACH Despite a common Western misconception that Iran, as the pre-eminent Shiite power, is motivated by religion, it has always been much more pragmatic in pursuing its national interest, analysts and diplomats say, allowing it to turn a blind eye to Sunni Al-Qaeda using its territory. “The

thing that has stymied people is that ‘AlQaeda is Sunni and the rest of the people we are talking about here are Shiite. They don’t mix and match.’ Well, they do. And they do it whenever they want to. They just look the other way,” said Nick Pratt, a retired US Marines colonel and CIA officer now with the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies.

Before the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, Iran cooperated with India and Russia against the Pakistan-backed Taleban then in power in Kabul. When Al-Qaeda members fled Afghanistan after the overthrow of the Taleban, it detained them under house arrest in Tehran. “Since 9/11 a number of senior Al-Qaeda figures including one of Osama bin Laden’s sons and senior commander and strategist Saif al Adel made their way to Iran,” said Nigel Inkster, former director of operations for Britain’s MI6.

“They were detained under quite strict conditions by the Iranian authorities who subsequently sought to use them as a bargaining chip with the US government in their ongoing dispute about Iran’s nuclear program,” added Inkster, who is now director of Transnational Threats and Political Risk at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Vahid Brown, a US-based researcher who has written extensively on Al-Qaeda, said in an article on the Jihadica website earlier this year that the men who fled to Iran constituted a dissident faction within Al-Qaeda, which in recent years had become increasingly vocal in their criticism of bin Laden and Zawahiri. Divided by their views on the advisability of the Sept 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, broadly speaking, “the pro-9/11 group, including bin Laden and Zawahiri, fled to Pakistan, while the anti9/11 group ended up in Iran, where they were placed under house arrest by Iranian authorities,” he wrote.

Iran had been willing to cooperate with the United States on Afghanistan initially, but relations soured after Tehran was denounced by then President George W Bush as part of the “axis of evil” in 2002 and worsened further after the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Later, analysts say, Tehran allowed AlQaeda members - among them Al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi - to transit through Iran. But Iran has been vulnerable to Al-Qaeda as well. After one of its diplomats was kidnapped in Pakistan some years ago it released some of the Al-Qaeda members it had under house arrest in exchange for his freedom, according to Pakistani media reports.

“About 18 months ago the Iranians released most if not all of those they were holding, for reasons still not entirely clear,” said Inkster. “There may well be a residual AQ presence in Iran though I would be cautious about presenting it as something very structured or hierarchic,” he added. “AQ is far from being the organization it once was and what matters more are relationships between likeminded individuals. And that may well be what we are seeing in the Canada case.

There seems to be no evidence of Iranian official involvement.” — Reuters

FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2013 www.kuwaittimes.net

A full moon rises behind a statue of a Kansas Indian on top of the Kansas Statehouse Wednesday, April 24, 2013, in Topeka, Kan. — AP

Food FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2013

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t all started with a mistake - more a careless disregard for the principles of baking. I was making chocolate cupcakes for a birthday dinner. Being a bit lazy and a bit clumsy with the gloppy batter, I overfilled the muffin tin cups. Everyone who bakes cupcakes knows you don’t do that. But I did. And the batter overran the cups, creating ugly cupcakes with huge, spreading mushroom heads - which broke off right where the tops met the bodies when I tried to get them out of the pan.

Still, they were delicious, even unfrosted, thanks to the recipe from baking guru Nick Malgieri’s “Bake!” (Kyle Books, $29.95). We ate a few to mark the birthday, leaving me with more than a dozen ugly (but delicious), tops-coming-off cupcakes. What to do with them? Frosting them seemed silly. What about transforming them into something else? Like a trifle? Not quite right. Too fussy.

But then, inspired by a dessert the next night at Fat Rice in Chicago, which layered ground-up shortbread in a parfait, I had the answer: cupcake parfaits.

Layering homemade chocolate pudding, whipped cream and the decapitated cupcakes transformed a mistake into a new house favorite. They were a big hit the next night at our weekly “Top Chef” watching dinner. And have been requested by friends again. There’s something about playing with the ubiquitous but still loved cupcake that brings out the kid in us, makes us sit up in delight at the idea. And makes us dig in.

stantly, over moderately high heat. Strain the pudding into a bowl. Stir in the butter and chocolate until melted.

2. Pour pudding into a glass bowl to cool. Press plastic wrap directly on the surface of the pudding; refrigerate until chilled, about 30 minutes.

Nutrition information: Per serving: 521 calories, 41 g fat, 25 g saturated fat, 153 mg cholesterol, 39 g carbohydrates, 8 g protein, 141 mg sodium, 3 g fiber.

CHOCOLATE CUPCAKES Prep: 20 minutes Cook: 18 minutes Makes: 18 to 20 cupcakes Note: Author Nick Malgieri outlines how to turn any of his cake recipes in “Bake!” into cupcakes. This recipe applies those guidelines to his chocolate butter cake. Malgieri advises coating the top of the pans with cooking spray or butter so that the cupcake tops don’t stick if they spread (and, remember, we want them to spread for the parfaits to get broad tops). The directions are for a stand mixer, but the batter can certainly be mixed with a hand mixer.

Directions 1. Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Line muffin pans with 18-20 paper liners. Whisk the flour, baking powder and salt together in a bowl; set aside.

2. Combine the butter and sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Beat on low speed until well mixed. Increase the speed to medium; beat until mixture is very light and pale in color, about 5 minutes. Beat in the vanilla.

3. Beat in the eggs one at a time, beating smooth after each addition. Beat in the melted chocolate. Scrape the bowl and beater with a spatula.

4. Restart the mixer on low. Add a quarter of the flour mixture; beat until absorbed. Increase speed to medium-low; beat in 1 cup milk.

5. Repeat step 4, including the change of speed, two more times.

6. Stop and scrape; beat in the remaining flour mixture. Scrape again. Increase the speed to medium; beat 3 minutes.

7. Divide the batter among the lined pans, filling the cups to the top. Bake, 15-20 minutes. Cool before proceeding with parfait.

(Enjoy remaining cupcakes as you like.)

CHOCOLATE CUPCAKE PARFAITS Makes: 6 parfaits Note: We found the parfaits taste better if assembled one day ahead.

Prep: Whip 1 cup whipping cream, with 1 to 2 tablespoons sugar, to soft peaks.

Cut tops off 6 cupcakes, slicing them crosswise just below where the top meets the body.

Choose 6 glasses that are wide enough to accommodate the cupcake tops. Instead of traditional parfait glasses, use a straightsided 10- to 12-ounce drinking glass.

Layer: Plop about 1\2 cup chocolate pudding in the bottom of each glass.

Nestle the cupcake bottoms into the pudding, pushing in gently so the pudding comes partway up the sides of the cupcakes.

Dollop each with a generous portion of whipped cream, pushing it down around the sides of the cupcake and covering its top.

Dollop on a half-inch layer of pudding.

Gently top with the cupcake tops.

Finish with a dollop each of pudding and whipping cream.

Shavings of dark chocolate would be nice as well.

If assembling the parfaits a day ahead, finish the top with the pudding, but don’t add the final dollop of whipped cream. (Cover and chill the whipped cream.) Cover the parfaits and chill. When ready to serve, re-fluff the whipped cream a bit with a whisk.

Dollop the whipped cream onto the parfaits and serve.

DEEP CHOCOLATE PUDDING Prep: 15 minutes Cook: 18 minutes Chill: 30 minutes Servings: 4 Note: Adapted from Foodandwine.com.

Ingredients: 1 cup each: heavy cream, whole milk 1 egg, lightly beaten 1\2 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar 2 tablespoons each: unsweetened cocoa powder, cornstarch 1 teaspoon salt 2 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon unsalted butter 3 ounces bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped Directions 1. Whisk the cream, milk and egg in a medium saucepan. In a bowl, whisk together the sugar, cocoa, cornstarch and salt; add mixture to the saucepan. Heat to a boil, whisking con-

Ingredients 2 cups flour 3 teaspoons baking powder 1\2 teaspoon salt 1 stick (12 tablespoons) unsalted butter, softened 1 cup sugar 2 teaspoons vanilla 3 large eggs, at room temperature 3 ounces unsweetened chocolate, melted, cooled 1 cup whole milk, at room temperature

Nutrition information: Per serving: 206 calories, 10 g fat, 6 g saturated fat, 47 mg cholesterol, 27 g carbohydrates, 3 g protein, 128 mg sodium, 1 g fiber. — MCT

Food FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2013

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outhern fried chicken has long preened in the cultural spotlight, thanks in part to such notables as chef Edna Lewis, TV’s Paula Deen and one Kentucky colonel named Harland Sanders. But a new bird is rising out of the East - the Far East - that is capturing some of that shine: fried chicken, Asian-style. From Myanmar (Burma) in the southeast to Korea in the north, Asia is home to many variations on the fried chicken theme. All are golden and crunchy, but the flavorings can change from country to country.

“Marination gives extra flavor to the chicken,” says Makiko Itoh, a Tokyo-born food writer and blogger living in Vaison-laRomaine, France, as she explains why Asian-style fried chicken is so popular. Marinating also ensures the chicken stays moist and juicy, she says. Marja Vongerichten makes a similar point in her cookbook, “The Kimchi Chronicles.”

“Unlike American fried chicken, which tends toward the salty end of the spectrum, Korean fried chicken is sweet and sticky but no less addictive,” writes the New York-based host of “Kimchi Chronicles,” a public television show. “Now, Korean-style chicken (KFC anyone?), full of great flavor and tremendous crunch, has been exported back to the States, where it’s become all the rage.”

Hard numbers are hard to come by, but there appears to be a growing hunger for, at the very least, Asian-style chicken wings, reports Darren Tristano, executive vice president for Technomic Inc., a Chicago-based food industry research and consulting company.

“Wings are becoming a canvas for innovation and flavor,” he says, noting that the range of flavors keys in to the consumer appetite for customization. Such customization is easy to do at home. You can use various marinades, coatings and dipping sauces to create your own flavors and textures. Proper frying is the same whatever the cuisine. All you need beyond that is a sturdy pot filled with hot oil, some tongs or chopsticks for retrieving the various bits of fried bird, and a rack or paper-lined plate to blot off any extra grease.

Making the chicken: To prepare any of the ethnic variations here, marinade the chicken as directed; coat where applicable; then fry following the directions below. Serve with the sauce as described.

Pour 1 to 2 inches oil in a deep skillet, deep fryer or flat-bottomed wok. Use an oil with a high smoking temperature, like peanut, safflower or corn.

Heat to 350 degrees. Use a deep-fat thermometer to check temperature. Alternatively, drop a small piece of bread or green onion into the oil. If the item bubbles vigorously, the oil is ready.

Don’t crowd the pan; fry the chicken in batches to keep the oil temperature from dropping too low.

BURMESE Chicken: One 3-pound chicken (or 2 to 3 pounds breasts, legs, wings), chopped into small pieces Marinade: Rub 2 teaspoons salt and 1\2 teaspoon turmeric into chicken. Pour on 3 to 4 tablespoons fish sauce. Cover, marinate, refrigerated, 2-3 hours.

Sauce: Place 1\2 cup tamarind pulp in a small bowl. Add 1/2 cup hot water; soak, 10 minutes. Mash the tamarind with a fork to separate seeds and fibers from the pulp. Press the tamarind through the sieve over a bowl, using the back of a spoon to extract as much liquid as possible from the pulp. Pound 2 minced

cloves garlic and 3 minced green cayenne chilies into a rough paste with a pinch of salt in a mortar (or process to a coarse paste in a food processor). Stir the paste into the tamarind liquid; add 1 teaspoon each sugar and salt. Best when served freshly made.

JAPANESE Chicken: 10 ounces boneless thighs Marinade: Mince one 1-inch piece ginger; mix with 3 tablespoons soy sauce and 1 tablespoon sake. Marinate chicken in sauce, 30 minutes.

Coating: Dredge chicken pieces in about { cup potato starch (katakuriko) or cornstarch.

Sauce: Combine in a small skillet: 1 tablespoon each rice vinegar, soy sauce and finely chopped green onion. Add 1 teaspoon grated ginger, a pinch of sugar and a few drops sesame oil. Heat on medium heat, stirring, until the sugar dissolves. Serve sauce with lemon wedges on the side. If serving the chicken later at room temperature, make the sauce and then put the cooked chicken pieces in the pan and toss to coat each with the hot sauce. Let chicken and sauce cool completely.

KOREAN Chicken: 2 pounds wings Marinade: Whisk in a large bowl: 2 tablespoons each fresh lime juice and soy sauce; 1 tablespoon each sugar, fish sauce, toasted sesame oil, gochujang (red pepper paste); 3 finely minced garlic cloves, 1 1/2inch piece ginger, minced. Add chicken wings, marinate covered for 20 minutes at room temperature.

Coating: Dredge wings in flour; tap off excess.

Sauce: Whisk in a large bowl: 3 tablespoons each gochujang and gochugaru (Korean red pepper powder); 2 tablespoons rice

vinegar and honey; 1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil. Add crispy cooked wings to bowl with sauce and toss to coat. Pile wings onto a platter; season with salt.

MALAYSIAN Chicken: 1 pound thighs, breasts, drumsticks, chopped into 2 to 3-inch pieces (leave drumsticks whole) Marinade: Puree 1/2 cup sliced shallots or onions; 1 teaspoon sliced fresh ginger; to 1 teaspoon sambal oelek and 1\2 cup water. Stir into the paste 1 tablespoon ground coriander; 1 teaspoon each ground cumin, ground fennel seeds and ground mustard; 1/2 teaspoon each black pepper, turmeric powder, sugar and salt; 1\2 teaspoon ground cinnamon and ground paprika.

Rub chicken with marinade, refrigerate 3 to 5 hours or overnight.

Sauce: Combine 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce; 1 teaspoon soy sauce; 1 teaspoon each, fresh lime juice, 1 teaspoon sugar (or 1 tablespoon honey); 1/2 teaspoon sambal oelek and 1\2 teaspoon salt. — MCT

Tr a v e l FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2013

Sandy Point on the island of St Croix in the US Virgin Islands is the main nesting beach in the northern Caribbean for leatherneck sea turtles. — MCT photos

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andy Point is one of the prettiest beaches in the Caribbean. It is also home to endangered sea turtles that come ashore from March to June to lay eggs in the powdery white sand on the island’s southwest corner. In fact, the refuge has been called a maternity ward for sea turtles.

It was a recent stop on a 12-mile bicycle tour of western St Croix, a tropical American territory with Danish roots and hundreds of historic old sugar cane plantations. The Sandy Point National Wildlife Refuge is the principal nesting beach for leatherback turtles in the northern Caribbean. It is also one of the most-studied turtle populations in the world.

The refuge also gets hawksbill turtles, another endangered species, plus the green turtle, a threatened species.

Loggerhead turtles are sometime visitors. The preserve, established in 1984, covers 383 acres. It offers two miles of continuous sand (the longest beach in the Virgin Islands), deep water access and no nearby offshore reefs. It is ideal for sea turtles.

The refuge is closed during peak turtle-breeding season

from late April to August. It is open 10 am to 4 pm weekends and on cruise ship-docking days the rest of the year. It gets about 11,000 visitors a year. Typically, between 18 and 55 female turtles will come ashore at Sandy Point to lay eggs in a given year.

Since 1981, 342 leatherback turtles have been tagged with microchips by refuge staffers and partnering conservation groups and volunteers. That includes AAG322, who was tagged in 1981 and is still a regular visitor. The female turtles return every two to three years from the North Atlantic to the beach where they were hatched to lay eggs.

The leatherback is the largest sea turtle, 4 to 8 feet long and weighing 500 to 2,000 pounds. It is also the deepest diving, most migratory and widest-ranging sea turtle on the globe.

Each female can produce 8 to 11 clutches of eggs per season.

Each clutch contains 50 to 80 eggs that are the size of billiard balls. The eggs are buried in sand and will hatch in about 60 days. The hatchlings are 2 inches long.

Fort Frederik dates to 1760 and was built by the Danish in Frederiksted on the west coast of St Croix, now part of the US Virgin Islands.

Estate Butler Bay on the northwest corner of St Croix is an old sugar cane plantation.

Tr a v e l FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2013

St Patrick’s Catholic Church in Frederiksted on St Croix is made of cut limestone with a mortar made of conch and molasses.

Adult males never leave the water and wait offshore near nesting sites to copulate randomly with females. In 2009, a record year, 202 females produced more than 1,100 nests in the refuge with at least 37,000 hatchling turtles. That is a big jump from the early 1980s when perhaps 2,000 hatchlings emerged at Sandy Point.

The biggest threats have been poaching and sand erosion that exposes the unhatched eggs. Today the beach is protected, and nests threatened by erosion are relocated by a US Fish and Wildlife Service overnight beach patrol from April through mid-July. About one-third of turtle nests get relocated.

Typically, each nest will produce 60 to 70 hatchlings, after 60 days in the sand. They instinctively leave the nest at night and head for the lightest horizon to find the water line, and then swim in a frenzy to the open sea. They can become disoriented by bright lights ashore.

The refuge volunteers do what they can to assist the hatchlings getting to the ocean. There are also nocturnal turtle watches that are open to the public. The Sandy Point beach has even had its Hollywood moment. In the film “The Shawshank Redemption,” Red (Morgan Freeman) walks along a Mexican beach. The scene was actually shot at Sandy Point.

Much of the film, which also starred Tim Robbins, was shot in and around Mansfield, Ohio.

Another stop on the bike tour, run by Freedom City Cycles, was the ruins of Estate Butler Bay, a sugar cane plantation, on the island’s northwest coast. It’s not far from pretty beaches and had a tree filled with iguanas sunning themselves.

The one-time plantation is off the Northwest Coastal Road (Route 63) and about 2 1/2 miles north of sleepy Frederiksted with its 3,700 residents on the island’s northwest coast. The stone ruins of the old factory date to 1787. The stonework is flanked by giant baobab trees that came from Africa with slaves that worked the sugar cane. Above Estate Butler Bay on the hillside are the stone remains of an old windmill that once powered a second plantation.

Butler Bay is one of 15 stops along the 72-mile St Croix Heritage Trail. The site is managed by the St Croix Landmarks Society, a grass-roots group, and public access is limited.

Estate Butler Bay was also reportedly the home of General Buddhoe, the leader of the 1848 slave uprising on St. Croix.

Buddhoe, whose given name was Moses Gottlieb, was not a slave but a free black man working at the estate.

An 1847 reform from Denmark’s King Christian VIII ordered that slave babies born after July 28, 1847, would be free, but slavery would not be abolished for 12 years. The slaves on St Croix were angry. Meetings were held and Buddhoe was a key

St Patrick’s Catholic Church in Frederiksted.

figure. On July 3, 1848, about 8,000 slaves marched on Frederiksted demanding their freedom. They destroyed several estates. The governor, Peter von Scholten, decreed the immediate emancipation of all slaves in the Danish West Indies. Buddhoe was deported and told he would be executed if he ever returned.

The bike tour also passed Fort Frederik in Frederiksted (the structure dates to 1760) and a Catholic church, St Patrick’s. It is made of cut limestone with a mortar made of conch and molasses. St Croix was one of the richest sugar islands in the West Indies from 1760 to 1820 when production was high and sugar prices were stable.

In 1803, St Croix’s population was 30,000, of whom 26,500 were slaves who planted, harvested and processed sugar cane on nearly 220 plantations. Most were 75 to 750 acres. The ruins of about 50 plantations remain, although public access is limited. St Croix is the largest and least developed of the US Virgin Islands. St. Thomas and St. John are the other two islands, 40 miles to the northeast. St Croix covers 84 square miles and has about 52,000 residents. The western part of the island is a rain forest; the eastern end is rocky and arid.

The island is celebrated for its laid-back attitude and its funky beach bars. It’s hard not to like a place where the average high temperature is 82 degrees and the water temperature is 80 degrees. Its western shore is known for sterling sunsets. There are more than 50 dive sites. In 1493, Christopher Columbus landed at Salt River on the north-central coast. He was greeted with spears and arrows from the native Caribs. It is now a historic site.

Colorful Christiansted on the north coast is one of the largest cities. It features a historic district with more than 100 buildings that date to the 18th and 19th centuries, one of the best-preserved towns in the Caribbean. At its center is Fort Christiansvaern. It was completed by the Danes in 1749 to protect the island from pirates, privateers, invaders and slave uprisings.

English is the language, the dollar is the currency but Crucians drive on the left, not the right. Buck Island Reef National Monument off the north coast is the island’s No. 1 tourist attraction. It is one of the premier diving-snorkeling spots in the Caribbean and gets 50,000 visitors a year. It covers more than 19,000 acres, mostly below water. It preserves one of the finest marine gardens in the Caribbean with stunning coral.

It is five miles from Christiansted, 1 mile offshore. — MCT

Health FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2013

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t’s probably what you use, do or eat daily that triggers pain

Pain Trigger: Flip-flops Often, the blame for our pain rests on the simple choices we make every day. The Cleveland Clinic Florida’s David Westerdahl, MD, shares a few examples-starting with flip-flops and foam-soled sandals.

They provide poor arch support, leading to pain in the feet, ankles, and knees.

Solution: Wear shoes with arch support. When you know you’ll be walking a lot, opt for sneakers.

Pain Trigger: Smartphones Do you have a phone that lets you text, surf the web, and play games? That’s a lot of mileage for your thumbs. Doctors have begun reporting cases of arthritis at the base of the thumb in younger people, possibly related to texting.

Solution: When your thumbs begin to ache, give the texting a rest. If pain continues, use your phone to make an actual call-to a doctor. There are effective treatments for arthritis.

Pain Trigger: Your wallet Your wallet can be a real pain in the back and the buttocks, and it can even lead to shooting pains down one leg. Tucked in a back pocket, it may lead to compression and irritation of the sciatic nerve day after day. A fat wallet may also put the spine slightly out of alignment, causing muscle tension.

Solution: Remove your wallet before sitting, especially in the car.

Pain Trigger: Driving Many people set their car seats at the wrong angle. If the seat is reclined, you may slouch forward to grip the steering wheel. This pulls your head away from the headrest and can cause neck pain.

Solution: Put your car seat in an upright position that supports your head and lower back. The steering wheel should be within easy reach, so your arms are slightly flexed and relaxed.

can actually give you tennis elbow, says Westerdahl.

Bags that you wear over one shoulder can contribute to back and shoulder pain.

Solution: Try a rolling laptop case or consider switching to a lighter model.

Pain Trigger: Your hairdo A tight ponytail may trigger-or worsen-a headache. Some migraine sufferers are more sensitive to sensations that wouldn’t bother others, such as a tight hat, headband, bun, or braids.

Solution: Wear your hair down and skip the hat.

Pain Trigger: Strong smells Doctors aren’t sure why, but strong smells are another common migraine trigger. This can include obnoxious odors, such as paint and smoke. But pleasant scents, including perfume and fresh flowers, can also be a problem.

Solution: Identify which smells spark your headaches and try to avoid them.

Pain Trigger: Weekend warrior syndrome You’re a weekend warrior if you’re sedentary all week but dive into sports and exercise on Saturday and Sunday. The sudden burst of activity catches the muscles unprepared, making them vulnerable to strains.

Solution: Start with 5-10 minutes of walking or another gentle exercise and stretch after your workout, when muscles are warm. During the week, take a few minutes to train the muscles you’ll be using during your weekend activities.

Pain Trigger: Sleep habits If you wake up sore most mornings, take a good look at your sleep posture. Stomach sleepers may twist their necks to the point of hyperextension.

Other people sleep on their sides with one arm overhead. After many hours, this position can strain the shoulder.

Solution: Better ways to sleep are on your back or on your side with your arms below shoulder level.

Side sleepers can place a pillow between the knees to support the lower back. Back sleepers can put a pillow under the neck and beneath their knees.

Pain Trigger: Skipping meals Skipping meals causes your blood sugar to dip. In some people, this can trigger a massive headache before you even realize you’re hungry.

Solution: Eat nutritious foods regularly throughout the day. Opt for snacks that combine protein and whole grains, such as peanut butter on whole-wheat crackers.

Pain Trigger: Active video games Video games that simulate the motions of popular sports can result in real sports injuries. Doctors say overzealous gaming can cause everything from sprains to torn ligaments and broken bones.

Solution: Do some stretching before starting an active video game. Make sure you have plenty of space around you, so you won’t trip or crash into anything. And don’t play for longer than you would a real sport.

Pain Trigger: Lifting with the back A top source of back pain is lifting the wrong way.

A common mistake is curving the back forward to grab an object, then straightening the back as you lift. This forces your back muscles to take the brunt of the burden. Twisting while you lift is another problem.

Solution: To lift properly, bend the knees and hips until you are squatting. Keep the back upright.

Grab the object and lift with your leg muscles by straightening your knees and hips.

Pain Trigger: Cheese Cheese lovers, take note-your favorite food may be the reason for all those headaches. Aged cheese, such as blue cheese, cheddar, parmesan, and Swiss contain high amounts of a substance called tyramine.This notorious headache trigger is also found in some processed meats and beverages.

Solution: Keep a food diary to help spot links between foods and headaches, so you’ll know what to avoid.

Pain Trigger: Your workstation If you spend many hours a day at your desk or workstation, give some thought to the setup. A poorly positioned chair can cause you to slouch forward, straining the back and neck. A monitor that’s too low or too high will also strain the neck.

Solution: Place your monitor with the top of the screen at eye level. Position your chair so that you are sitting straight with your feet on the floor. Use a cushion to support the lower back if needed.

Pain Trigger: Couch potato syndrome Even down time can be a source of aches and pains. Do you often lie across the couch with your head turned toward the television? You’re setting yourself up for a sore neck-especially if you fall asleep in that position.

Solution: Maintain good posture even when you’re relaxing. Sit up straight on your couch and make sure your TV is not positioned too high.

Pain Trigger: Eyestrain Headaches that are centered behind the eyebrows may be due to eyestrain. Eyestrain may occur when you have uncorrected vision problems, such as nearsightedness, farsightedness, or astigmatism.

Solution: Schedule an eye exam to see whether you need corrective lenses. If you already wear glasses, it may be time for a new prescription.

Pain Trigger: Laptop case If you carry your laptop around like an extra limb, you’re likely to strain some part of the body.

Handheld laptop cases put stress on the forearm and

Solution: Since you can’t control the weather, just be aware of which changes bring on your headaches.

That way, you can be ready for it.

Pain Trigger: Weather changes People have long claimed that changes in the weather can trigger headaches. In particular, when the temperature rises, some people may be more likely to get migraines and other severe headaches.

Pain Trigger: Shoulder rides It’s classic family fun: A parent walking along with a delighted child enjoying a shoulder ride. But lifting kids overhead is a common source of neck and shoulder pain.

Solution: Instead of lifting your child from the ground, sit on a couch or bench. Encourage your child to climb carefully onto your shoulders.

Pain Trigger: Grinding your teeth A sore jaw combined with a dull headache could mean you’re grinding or clenching your teeth in your sleep. If you’re a chronic grinder, pain isn’t the only concern. You could end up damaging your teeth, your jaw, and even your hearing.

Solution: See your dentist. He or she can provide a mouth guard that will protect your teeth during sleep.

Pain Trigger: Stress Stress contributes to a vast array of aches and pains. Many people tighten the back muscles when anxious, leading to chronic back pain. Most tension headaches stem from stress. And stress may play a role in teeth grinding, leading to jaw pain.

Solution: Practice relaxation techniques, such as meditation or yoga.

— www.webmd.com

Lifestyle FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2013

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documentary on the life of tragic British singer Amy Winehouse will feature unseen footage of the late star, the company handling its sale at the Cannes film festival said yesterday. Focus Features International, a division of US entertainment giant NBCUniversal, said it would be taking the as yet untitled film to next month’s Riviera movie extravaganza. The five-time Grammy award-winning singer died in July 2011 aged 27 from accidental alcohol poisoning. She had suffered years of drug and alcohol addiction.

“Using unseen archive footage, the film will show through her own words the genius in Amy’s art and the moving and tragic story of this young woman from London,” Focus Features said in a statement, adding that it would “introduce the project to buyers in Cannes”. The film is collaboration between British director Asif Kapadia and producer James Gay-Rees, whose acclaimed documentary on the late Formula One driver Ayrton Senna

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ans of “Nurse Jackie,” “Weeds,” and “The Big C” will recognize the quirky lead of “The English Teacher” as she steps out of her straight-laced life to encounter unexpected consequences, the movie’s director said in an interview. In “The English Teacher,” which has its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival on Friday, lead character Linda Sinclair, played by Julianne Moore, tries to mount a high school production of a play written by a former student (Michael Angarano) who has returned to his small hometown in Pennsylvania.

won them two BAFTAs. Kapadia and Gay-Rees described Winehouse as a “once-in-a-generation talent who captured everyone’s attention”.

“She wrote and sung from the heart and everyone fell under her spell. But tragically Amy seemed to fall apart under the relentless media attention, her troubled relationships, her global success and precarious lifestyle,” they said in the statement. Alongside the race for the Palme d’Or prize, Cannes is also a huge marketplace drawing thousands of people, from producers and distributors haggling over upcoming movies, to screenwriters hawking their scripts and firms offering innovations in computer-generated imagery. — AFP

With the help of Nathan Lane as the high school’s drama teacher and Greg Kinnear as the playwright’s father, putting on the production leads almost everyone involved into trouble.

Directing the tale is Craig Zisk, who has dozens of well-regarded television series under his belt as producer or director, including “Parks and Recreation,” “The Big C,” “Nip/Tuck,” “Weeds” and “Scrubs.”—Reuters

A cleaner checks a sculpture by Hong Kong artist Tam Wai Ping titled “Falling into Mundane World” during a press preview of the Mobile M+: Inflation! Exhibition in Hong Kong yesterday.

Mobile M+: Inflation! Presented six giant inflatable sculptures installed next to M+, Hong Kong’s future museum for visual culture, and will open to the public from 25 April - 9 June. — AFP

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Amy Winehouse

he song Jorge Drexler is singing has no specific end or beginning. “You were sleeping and I was watching you,” it might start. Or he might sing, “In came the daylight and the window showed a new season.”

Two strangers meet in hotel room 316. And what happens there, the listener decides. They may kiss and set sail into the unknown or gaze at each other and never touch. The Oscar-winning Uruguayan musician with a salt and pepper beard has created a song with more possibilities than the estimated number of stars in the universe.

It’s all devisable through “n by Jorge Drexler,” a mobile phone application he created with Wake App designers that debuts three new songs. He presented the project at the Billboard Latino Music Conference Tuesday in Miami. In Spain, it’s already become a top iTunes store app. In the first song, “Room 316,” the user chooses what Drexler will sing from rotating circles of phrases. All of the combinations make sense and no two are the same.

That’s followed by, “Driftwood,” in which Drexler sings and the user decides on the instruments in the background: A string quartet, a choir or perhaps a sole guitar. The app detects the user’s location and gives the listener access to different instruments depending on their location. The final song, “Decima to the power of ten,” is a tribute to the centuries-old Spanish-language poetic structure with 10 lines and a calculated syllable and rhythmic count.

Drexler spent nine months laboring over ten decimas in which all the lines could be fluidly interchanged. The concept behind the work is infinity, an idea that has long enchanted Drexler and which he has written about, without having composed an infinite song itself. He says the new odes are like a butterfly.

“A butterfly is beautiful,” Drexler says from a room overlooking the emerald waters of Biscayne Bay, a crowd of musicians, photographers and aspiring artists circling outside. “You can watch it in two situations. You can watch it fly and moving and see the beauty in the movement.” Or: You can watch it dead, pinned to a piece of paper. “And it’s still beautiful,” he says.

“But it’s not the same thing. These songs move.

I love the movement of the songs. If you stop them I think you freeze them. That’s not what they’re supposed to be.”

The Grammy-nominated artist has his doubts about whether listeners are ready to

embrace a new way of interacting with music. “I actually think it’s not the right time,” he says.

“It’s too early.” But it was the right time for him.

When approached about creating a mobile app, Drexler says he wanted to go beyond a simple fan page with information about tour dates. He wanted to create a new experience.

Probing the concept of technology and infinity, he drew on inspiration from composers like Brazilian musician Chico Buarque and 13th-century philosopher Ramon Llull.

Drexler was trained as a doctor before becoming a musician and frequently intertwines themes of love and displacement with ideas from math and science. The “n” in the name of the mobile phone app comes is a mathematical reference to the symbol that represents a series of natural numbers. “This was exhausting,” he says. “It was a year and a half of trying to explain to everybody from record companies to musicians that this was a new concept.” Despite the fact there are many songs within one, and users of the free mobile app can essentially create their own ballads, Drexler said still feels the composition is his. “It’s a song that’s like a living being,” he says. “I don’t create it as a statue. I create it as a living being and I know that it’s changing and evolving all the time.”— AP

Lifestyle FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2013

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eil Diamond is donating some of this week’s sales from ’Sweet Caroline’ after the tune became a source of comfort following the explosions at the Boston Marathon. Sales from Diamond’s song are up by 597 percent, Nielsen SoundScan said Wednesday. Diamond’s representative said the singer will donate the recent sales to marathon bombing victims. ‘Sweet Caroline’ sold 19,000 tracks this week. It sold 2,800 tracks the previous week and 1.75 million tracks to date.

The crowd-pleasing song is a staple of Boston Red Sox games. It makes no specific mention of Boston or the Red Sox, but the team started playing it regularly at Fenway Park more than a decade ago and fans took to it. The New York Yankees, Toronto Raptors and other professional sports teams also have played the song at games in the days after the deadly blasts April 15. Diamond released ‘Sweet Caroline’ in 1969. The song was inspired by Caroline Kennedy’s name. — AP

File photo shows Neil Diamond singing ‘Sweet Caroline’ in the eighth inning of a baseball game between the Boston Red Sox and the Kansas City Royals in Boston. — AP

File picture shows Hungarian violin student, Renato Botos and Hungarian jazz guitar player Ferenc Snetberger perform at Thalia theater in Budapest . — AFP

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outh Korean rapper Psy, whose latest video “Gentleman” tracked global megahit “Gangnam Style” by going viral on the Internet, has been knocked from the top of the music charts in his native country by a 63-year-old easy listening pop singer.

“Gangnam Style”, which holds the YouTube record for most views with more than 1.5 billion, catapulted the sunglasses Korean with the garish jackets to world stardom and made him one of the best-known faces to grace the growing K-pop music scene.

But Cho Yong-pil, who has been a fixture of Korean pop music since 1975 with his electronic music and ballads, took over the top spot in Korea with “Bounce,” according to both the daily and weekly charts on Naver, Korea’s top Internet portal. Fans lined up to buy “Hello,” Cho’s first album in a decade, when it went on sale earlier this week, and packed a stadium concert on Tuesday with people screaming his nickname of “Oppa” - a word used by Korean women for older men that Psy took to the world with the refrain “Oppa Gangnam Style”.

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music school in Hungary founded by a famous Roma musician aims to teach disadvantaged young people how to make a living from their talents. The Snetberger Music Talent Centre was set up two years ago by world-famous jazz guitarist Ferenc Snetberger at picturesque Felsoors, 120 kilometers (75 miles) south of Budapest on the northern shore of Lake Balaton. The school provides 60 students per year, 90 percent of whom are disadvantaged Roma kids, with a springboard into a musical career. At an end of year concert last week in a Budapest theatre, Gergely Nagy, a percussion student, said he was thrilled to be a part of it.

“What is really great here is that I could meet and play with Snetberger. We have already toured with the school to Vienna and Berlin. It’s incredible to be on stage with world-famous musicians,” he told AFP. “I knew neither scales nor music theory before coming to the school, but I was able to learn everything in five weeks, you just have to practice,” he added.

Snetberger, who has performed and recorded with leading musicians like Bobby McFerrin and Arild Andersen, said his school offers a chance to those who have little opportunities in life. “It’s not obvious to see, but most of the young people on stage are from very really poor backgrounds,” Snetberger told AFP. The 56-year-old musician said his own ‘difficult start’ was a main reason for his decision to set up the school. “I come from a very poor family and had to overcome years of enormous difficulties and obstacles before finally succeeding,” he said. The school holds auditions in eight locations around Hungary and takes in around 60 pupils-aged between 11 and 23 — per year. Students receive five hours of music tuition per day during 12 weeks spread between June, October and March as most also attend regular school. Classes ranging from theory and improvisation to genres like classical and jazz are taught by over 20 renowned musicians.—AFP

Psy

Cho’s songs took the top 10 places on the daily charts, pushing “Gentleman” to no. 13, and Psy had to settle for second place on the weekly charts. But “Gentleman” surged to fifth place on the Billboard Hot 100 this week and has racked up over 220 million views on YouTube after smashing the record for firstday views for songs.

Psy told reporters he had nothing but respect for the veteran crooner, noting that Cho had praised him at a Tuesday news conference. “I couldn’t be happier, although getting on the Billboard chart also makes me really grateful,” Psy told reporters yesterday prior to leaving for the United States. — Reuters

Lifestyle FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2013

This file photo shows Canadian singer Justin Bieber boarding his tour bus outside Grand Hotel for his concert in Stockholm. — AP

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wedish police said yesterday they found drugs on teen idol Justin Bieber’s tour bus in Stockholm, but had no suspects and were unlikely to pursue the case further. A police officer on crowd duty smelled marijuana on an empty tour bus outside the hotel where Bieber was staying just before his concert in the capital on Wednesday night, police spokesman Kjell Lindgren said. Police searched the empty bus after it had taken 10 to 15 individuals to the concert venue.

“The police went onto the bus and searched it and found a small amount of narcotics,” Lindgren said. “We don’t know who had the drugs or who smoked them, so it will be hard to link them with any individual.” The drugs have been sent for analysis and Lindgren said the police did not plan further action unless they got more information. Bieber is travelling Europe on his “Believe” tour and is due in Finland for a concert on Friday.

Bieber got into trouble earlier this month after a museum ded-

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This cover image released by People shows actress Gwyneth Paltrow on the cover of a special double issue. — AP photos

G

wyneth Paltrow says she’s thrilled to be picked by People magazine as “World’s Most Beautiful Woman” for 2013 but it’s “obviously not true.” Paltrow questioned her own selection as she walked the red carpet at the Hollywood premiere of “Iron Man 3” Wednesday night. “It’s funny, these things, because it’s like obviously not true. But it’s very sweet to be named that,” Paltrow told The Associated Press. “Because I mean you can’t say that, you know! But it’s been wonderful. It’s been very wonderful. And as my friend said, it’s so nice that someone who has kids and is a mom and is not like 21 is named that. It’s really an honor.” Paltrow said her two children weren’t aware of the news in this week’s edition of the magazine, but she’d been getting plenty of congratulatory emails from friends and family.

The 40-year-old actress stars as Pepper Potts, Tony Stark’s love interest and assistant-turned-business partner in the “Iron Man” trilogy. —AP

Canadian singer Justin Bieber performing on stage during the ‘I Believe Tour‘ in Berlin, Germany. — AP

here’s a siege mentality about Michael Bay’s movies, as though viewers are the enemy holed up in a bunker and he’s the guy ordering heavy-metal music around-theclock to wear down our morale and force us to surrender. Bay’s true-crime caper “Pain & Gain” lacks the visual-effects mayhem and sci-fi cacophony of his “Transformers” blockbusters, yet the movie uses all the shock and awe and noise and bluster the director has in his utterly unsubtle arsenal.

Unlike Bay’s usual action nonsense, there’s a story, screenplay, characters and wry mix of suspense and pitiable comedy to be had in the tale of three Florida bodybuilders who blunder through kidnapping schemes like the Three Stooges on steroids. All but the faintest flashes of humanity and pathos are flattened by the cinematic cyclone that is Michael Bay. He drowns “Pain & Gain” in gimmick and style which, rather than gussying things up, dresses them down to make the movie even more ugly and sordid than it is on paper.

That these three guys, played by Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne Johnson and Anthony Mackie, are boobs and imbeciles, we get it from their actions. That what they do is reprehensible, that’s clear to see. That the world as they view it is twisted and coarse, another given. So why can’t Bay set aside a few visual tricks and give us an occasional breather from the overload on screen? “Pain & Gain” is a two-hour onslaught of dizzy, drunken cuts, hot bodies in empty poises, shifting perspectives (with a babble of alternating character voice-overs to accompany) and often sickening images.

Example: Bay puts all of his technical knowhow into a remarkably constructed shot of Tony Shalhoub, as the bodybuilders’ first victim, spewing spit as he’s Tasered. It’s done in agonizing slow-motion and extreme close-up, huge bubbles of saliva erupting from Shalhoub’s mouth. An impressive bit of technical work that’s just disgusting and unpleasant to watch. Despite the sheen of Bay’s imagery,

icated to Anne Frank said the 19-year-old had written that he hoped the young Holocaust victim would have been a “belieber”, the word used by his fans to describe themselves. Anne Frank, who died aged 15 at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945, is one of the best-known Jewish victims of the Holocaust due to her diary. — Reuters

everything about “Pain & Gain” looks filthy and diseased. Likewise Wahlberg, so boyishly charming as another stunted man-child in last summer’s “Ted,” shows nothing but grubbiness as Daniel Lugo, the dimwitted mastermind of this plot carried out around Miami in the mid1990s.

An ignoramus awash in envy toward the rich people he trains at a gym, Lugo enlists disciple Adrian Doorbal (Mackie) and born-again ex-con Paul Drake (Johnson) to kidnap selfmade millionaire Victor Kershaw (Shalhoub) and torture him to extort everything he’s got.

The dumbfounding farce of how these guys screw things up should be entertainment enough all on its own. —AP

This film image released by Paramount Pictures shows, from left, Dwayne Johnson, Anthony Mackie and Mark Wahlberg in a scene from ‘Pain and Gain.’ — AP

Lifestyle FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2013

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ed-carpet arrivals of celebrities such as Beyonce and Rooney Mara at The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute Benefit in New York City will be streamed live on Vogue.com. The annual gala draws a mix of Hollywood A-listers, designers and supermodels to celebrate the museum’s big fashion-focused exhibit. This year’s event will be held May 6. Beyonce is honorary chairwoman, with co-chairs Mara, Givenchy creative director Riccardo Tisci, Vogue editor-in chief Anna Wintour and Lauren Santo Domingo, co-founder of online retailer Moda Operandi.

This year’s corresponding exhibit is “Punk: Chaos to

Couture,” detailing the lasting influence of the raw, edgy 1970s clothes on the modern runway. The live stream, hosted by model Hilary Rhoda and Vogue’s William Norwich, can also be seen on the Moda Operandi, Samsung and Met websites. — AP In a Sunday, Feb 17, 2013 file photo, Beyonce sits courtside before the NBA All-Star basketball game, in Houston. — AP

Afghan children from the Mobile Mini Circus for Children (MMCC) take part in a performance to honor ‘World Circus Day’ at their centre in Kabul.— AFP photos

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n a dusty city of grey concrete blast walls where there’s not always much to smile about, the organizers of a children’s circus try to provide a splash of color and some moments of joy. The Kabul-based Mobile Mini-Circus for Children (MMCC) was founded in Afghanistan in 2002, months after the fall of the hardline Taliban Islamic regime which banned music and dance. Fewer than one million children-and no girls-attended school nationwide at the time.

While other NGOs and government agencies focused on food, shelter and education, MMCC (www.afghanmmcc.org) strove to introduce “soft” values bringing children together to foster a more joyful atmosphere despite frequent hardship.

“It’s a special circus,” said founder David Mason, a former salsa and tango dance instructor from Denmark. “It’s a circus to educate, give meaning to life, make children happy, make them dream and realize their dreams and gain self-confidence and inspiration.” Professional adult artists tour and perform for children across the war-torn country.

In the past 11 years, Mason told AFP, the circus and its local partner the Afghan Educational Children’s Circus have attracted a total live audience of more than 2.7 million people in 25 provinces. At a show in Kabul on Sunday to mark World Circus Day, young performers in colorful cloaks circled a courtyard on rollerskates and headscarved girls showed off their juggling skills. Children performed cartwheels and backward somersaults and formed human pyramids, dancing and clapping to entertain an audience of their peers from a camp for internally displaced people and an orphanage.

Conditions in the camps housing the country’s half a million internal refugees are notoriously harsh. In the winter of 2011-2012 about 100 people, mostly children and the elderly, lost their lives in the cold. “When you are living under a plastic sheet in a Kabul winter, then... hardship and surviving makes people forget about living. And then once you have survived, there’s nothing much to live for,” said Mason, 47. The circus

works to change that. A total of 120 girls and boys attend a centre in Kabul after regular school hours to learn circus skills, going on to give performances in schools and refugee camps.

“They are semi-professionals,” said Mason, co-director of the non-profit body with his partner Berit Muhlhausen. MMCC also draws on support from almost 100 international professionals and volunteers. Enjoyment is the main message but the circus also stages hour-long educational performances starting with a Koran recital. They include messages lasting for 10-15 minutes on the importance of hygiene, school attendance, mine awareness and malaria prevention. Children “never forget the messages because the music is there, the story is there, compared with traditional messages,” Mason said.

But the overriding message is to be happy. “It’s difficult to convince academics and people in power that having a reason to be joyful is a huge achievement, an aim in itself,” he said.

Mason said he has “very good relations” with the education and culture ministries, and Deputy Culture Minister Nabi Farahi watched Sunday’s show. He told AFP that attention to

children’s art and talents “is really important in society. We can see that young Afghan people have a lot of talent.” Firouz, an 11-year-old who lives in a camp for internal refugees, also enjoyed the show. “This program is fun,” he said. “I’d like to learn how to juggle and do gymnastics. It’s really good.”

Every year the circus brings together children from across Afghanistan for major events such as festivals and children’s assemblies. This, says MMCC, promotes unity in a multi-ethnic country. The circus, which has also performed overseas, says 75 percent of all its activities are run and taught by children at a time when Afghanistan is taking control of its own future as the international community steps back. “Over the past decade, the children and youngsters at (the circus) have developed the capacity to lead young people across Afghanistan,” it says on its website. “Their voices are the voices of Afghanistan’s future.”—AFP

Lifestyle FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2013

An Afghan store at ‘Rabia Balkhi’ displays miniature burqua designs draped on used coca-cola bottles at an all women’s market on Chedgari Street in Mazar-e-Sharif province yesterday. The Rabia Balkhi women’s market houses about 20 women-owned stores that sell a range of goods from handicrafts to beauty supplies and photography equipment, and is named after the famous princess and poet Rabia Balkhi or Rabia Qozdari who lived in the city of Balkh during the 9th century. — AFP

A creation entitled ‘Surrealist object that functions symbolically - Gala’s Shoe’ (19301973).

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adrid’s Reina Sofia Museum opens today a major retrospective of works by Spanish surrealist artist Salvador Dali which explores how his experiments with painting, cinema and advertising have influenced art. The exhibition features more than 200 paintings, sculptures, drawings, writings and television and film clips from the 1920s to the 1980s, including 30 works never before shown in Spain.

“We wanted to show the richness of Salvador Dali’s creation.

We wanted to show the whole output of this artist, a complex, paradoxal and controversial personality,” said Jean-Michel Bouhours, one of the curators of the show.

Dali is praised by some as a creative genius for his striking and bizarre images. However his TV ad campaigns and media stunts, such as burying himself in banknotes, led some critics to dismiss the mustachioed artist’s work as little more than marketing. The star attraction of the exhibition is Dali’s bestknown painting, the 1931 “The Persistence of Memory” which depicts melting pocket watches. Dali said the painting, on loan to the exhibition from the Museum of Modern Art in New York, was inspired by watching camembert cheese liquefying in the sun.

While the show, which runs until September 2, focuses on Dali’s paintings, also on display are photographs, films and even a Lanvin chocolate ad which aired on French TV in the 1960s. “Dali is an interesting artist because he always shifts

Two women look at a painting entitled ‘Autoportrait’ (1972) by Spanish surrealist artist Salvador Dali during the exhibition ‘Dali. — AP photos

between a great respect for the traditions of the great masters and an insatiable desire for all that is new,” said Montse Aguer, another curator of the show. “Dali lived in an era when painting was inexorably destined to lose ground to other art forms like photography, cinema and conceptual art, and he dabbled in all of these.”

Among the films on display is the 1929 silent short film “Un Chien Andalou”, written with Spanish director Luis Bunuel, with its notorious scene of a woman’s eye being slit by a razor. Another is “Destino”, an animated short Dali made for the Walt Disney Company, which was only released in 2003. The exhibition was staged earlier this year at the Pompidou Centre modern art museum in Paris. Dali died in his native Figueres in Catalonia in northeastern Spain in 1989 at the age of 85. — AFP

A woman takes a picture of a painting entitled ‘The Invisible Man’ (1929-1932).

FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2013

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SHARQIA-1 THE HAUNTING IN CONNECTICUT 2 NO TELL MOTEL (DIG) SHADOW (DIG) (TELUGU) THE HAUNTING IN CONNECTICUT 2 NO FRI NO TELL MOTEL (DIG) NO TELL MOTEL (DIG) NO TELL MOTEL (DIG)

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Pe t s FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2013

Rosie, a Labrador retriever, greets Oleta Woodside at the Alexander Cohen Hospice House in Hughson, California. — MCT photos

Dr Pickell (left) and his 8-year-old yellow lab Rosie, visit with Roxanne Poole, daughter of a patient being cared for at the Alexander Cohen Hospice House in Hughson, California.

HUGHSON, Calif. : Nearly every day, Dr. Gary Pickell makes his rounds at the Alexander Cohen Hospice House.

So does his good friend Rosie.

They visit the terminally ill patients, about half of whom come to the 16-room facility to ease into eternity. Others are there to have their pain and other problems controlled and stabilized so that they can go home to spend their final days. And others check in to give their caregiver kinfolk a break.

The house serves about 700 patients each year.

Rosie is there for all of them. She’s an 8-year-old golden Labrador retriever and a full-time staff member.

“She works for food,” Pickell said.

With her photo ID “volunteer” badge dangling from her collar, Rosie brings friendship and joy to a place that, despite its cleanliness, classy decor and cheerful staff, cannot help but be cloaked in sadness. She makes friends easily and eases their pain in a way some medications cannot.

“She’s a pet therapist,” Pickell said. “She provides emotional support. Elderly people can be forgetful. They don’t remember me, but they’ll remember her. She’ll introduce herself and then go lie down. And while I’m doing my paperwork, she’ll go back and visit.”

Rosie comes from a line of downsized, calm goldens, a gift from a breeder in Escalon, Calif.

“For the first year, I had Rosie on a leash attached to my belt,” he said. “After that, she knew what she had to do.”

Which is to be there to be petted, and to be a distraction for family members there waiting for the inevitable. “To take the edge off the emotional strain,” he said. “And with the patients, she helps them feel more in touch with nature. A few don’t like dogs, but very few.”

Helen Amarant of Atwater, Calif., and Rosie became fast friends when Helen’s husband, Joe, became a patient.

“I think Rosie liked me instantly,” Helen said.

“We’ve always had German shepherds. I never met a dog I didn’t love.” After her husband passes, she said, “I will still come back and feed her.”

Roxanne Poole, there last week to visit her mom, Shirley Turner, is another Rosie fan.

“She’s sweet,” Roxanne said. “She follows us around.” Roxanne brings bacon-strip doggie snacks, making her one of Rosie’s favorites, as well.

“My dog’s going to be jealous when I get home, smelling you on me,” she said, talking to Rosie.

Oleta Woodside is a patient at the Hospice House. Oleta is 80 and quick to tell you she once reigned as Modesto, Calif.’s very first Miss Industry “when I was 21 or 22,” which would have been in the early 1950s. “I represented Modesto to industry,” she said, her eyes suggesting she had drifted back to another era.

She also loves to talk about her 30 years as the Doll Doctor, designing and creating costumes and accessories for antique dolls in her Modesto shop.

“I did over 7,000 restorations,” she said. “For nine years, my sister worked with me, and we both brought our dogs to work every day.”

But now, in the Hospice House, she misses her cat, Marmalade, and dog, Molly, the latter a Maltese breed. “I would love to bring them in here,” she said. “Molly was a rescue dog.”

Which makes Rosie’s visits so meaningful. She dropped in unannounced on Oleta earlier that morning.

“She got to share a little bit of my breakfast,” Oleta said. “But not too much. We don’t want her getting overweight. She’s a charming, delightful dog. I enjoy her friendship very much.” A friend, indeed, and just what the doctor ordered. — MCT

Stars

FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2013

Aries (March 21-April 19)

Making important and difficult decisions is a key issue of this time period. You question important issues in your life, and try very hard to come to crystal clear, simple solutions to problems. You don’t want to follow anybody else’s lead at this time, but fortunately you are able find ways to be yourself and even be a little more confident than you normally are. You are not interested in fleeting excitement or small thrills, it’s all about the big win and the love of someone special.

Libra (September 23-October 22)

You want to feel good about yourself and the way you do things. An instinctive urge to get serious about taking care of yourself at many levels is emphasized now. You will benefit from taking a more self centered view, turning away from the outward world a bit and allowing new ideas and information to filter through. Diet, exercise, and work have more importance now. This day has the potential to give birth to all kinds of positive ideas and feelings. Emotions burst out like spring flowers, playfulness abounds, and it can seem like there is no limit to what’s out there for you. Take the initiative and run with it now and you’ll go far.

Taurus (April 20-May 20)

The day is won by multiple, smaller choices made wisely, rather than hanging on a single issue, so don’t obsess but decide quickly and move right along to the next.

This is a great time for currying new acquaintances as the air of intensity makes for strong personal connections and breaks through the barriers of unfamiliarity. Relationships can get a bit weird right now or at least take an unexpected turn. The need for more freedom, independence, or novelty on your part, or on the part of someone close to you, may disrupt the status quo in an important relationship. Expect the unexpected in your relationships!

Scorpio (October 23-November 21) Someone’s support today is quite welcome, and if you’ve had a few nervous moments over your finances or you were impulsive on your most recent spending spree; your friend will help you put things in perspective. The fact is, there’s no use crying over spilt milk, so look forward and create a realistic budget instead of worrying about what cannot be changed. Your emotions are sensitized now. Your intuitive, feeling nature is very strong. You will find yourself gripped by feelings of nostalgia and compassion. Memories of feelings and situations long forgotten come to the surface. See if you can find some resolution.

Gemini (May 21-June 20)

Love, passion, idealism and self-interest? How do you balance these four aspects of your life today and please all parties involved in the equation? Love and passion may fall short of your idea of the ideal and in the process you’ll feel as though you’re not being nurtured in the way you want. Don’t settle for less than what you think you’re worth in relationships.

Make your value known. A shift in moods and attitudes occurs at this time that will continue to affect you deeply for a few days. You may be emotionally sensitive now, but often it is difficult for you to clearly express what you are feeling. Try not to take things that are said or done too seriously as you may be hurt more than any one intends for you to be.

Cancer (June 21-July 22) Resources, human and otherwise, are making themselves available to support you, so take what’s offered and use it wisely. What people have to say about you is dependent on your healthy use of yourself and what you possess, and both are looking good. Accept praise, then accept it gracefully and go with what’s offered to you while it’s available. You have a special magnetism and attractive power now, in other terms, baby when you’re hot you’re hot. You are likely feeling intensely loving also.

Your relationships, particularly sexual or romantic ones, intensify and have a deep, compelling, urgent quality. Your inner feelings and needs for love and closeness emerge very strongly.

Leo (July 23-August 22) This could be a fun time socially, but much depends upon the effort you put forth into motivating and influencing others. They are apt to rely too much on your personal energy and expertise in the planning of social gatherings. A time when something personal, sensitive, or very secret will come storming out of the closet to confront you. It’s a definite day for emotions to run both hot and cold. Change is the easiest thing to do if you are capable of letting things go. Close ties to other people are a focal point for your feelings, a partner, lover or potential new relationship.

Sagittarius (November 22-December 21)

Your physical energy and get-up-and-go are put in focus this month in a way that showcases your ability to sustain efforts and makes an impression of robust strength that engenders admiration and trust. It means, however, that you will be committing yourself to a rhythm which you will likely have to repeat. Your desires are strong, and you will want to enjoy yourself at this time, maybe even selfishly. Romance is very possible if you make just a little effort to take a risk. There is a basic drive to appreciate and taste life, go for it!

Capricorn (December 22-January 19)

Misunderstood and/or misstated feelings could be expected today, so heads up so hurt feelings can be avoided. As soon as the fog feeling lifts, it’s back again, and trying to see a straight course will be hard for all, so double-check information and go slow to avoid misunderstandings. This is an excellent time for personal relationships and friendships. You are able to share feelings, interests, and concerns openly and honestly with others. You can see connections and possibilities you may have overlooked before. Now is a time for communicating and sharing your plans and dreams.

Aquarius (January 20- February 18)

You may seek a more spiritual or esoteric answer to questions today. That’s okay. Sometimes things don’t need to make rational sense for them to work. Step outside the square today and approach challenges from a completely different vantage point. Your feelings run hot now, and you are more likely to act on instinct, emotion, and impulse rather than reason. Your responses to life are passionate, and also more natural, childlike, and direct. High spirited physical play, lovemaking, or any activity that really involves you emotionally is where you will be most passionate.

Virgo (August 23-September 22) Sometimes the need to play detracts from professional progress and the achievement of long-range goals.

Friendship with colleagues and especially superiors may be lacking, or prove to be a detriment to you in a roundabout way today. It seems you must choose either business or pleasure— work or play. These two arenas simply don’t go together very well for you at present, so don’t try to split your time between them. Choose one and go for it. Your feelings are running high during this period. You may find yourself so emotionally charged that it is difficult not to tell everyone how you feel about everything. Letting your feelings flow is fine as long as you are careful who you let them flow to. Unmanaged compassion may lead you to aide some who don’t really need or merit your help.

Pisces (February 19-March 20)

There’s a difficulty putting your finger on your feelings right now, a trend that will be sticking around for a while. If you allow yourself to proceed on previous assumptions, you can be way off base without realizing it, so take time to question your motivations and see if they are leading you where you really want to go. Relationships of all types are activated now and cooperation, compromise, and adjustments to others’ viewpoints are the issues that require your attention.

You may come into contact with a person who is especially creative or influential in your life. Keep your eyes and ears open so they don’t pass you by.

COUNTRY CODES Afghanistan 0093 Albania 00355 Algeria 00213 Andorra 00376 Angola 00244 Anguilla 001264 Antiga 001268 Argentina 0054 Armenia 00374 Australia 0061 Austria 0043 Bahamas 001242 Bahrain 00973 Bangladesh 00880 Barbados 001246 Belarus 00375 Belgium 0032 Belize 00501 Benin 00229 Bermuda 001441 Bhutan 00975 Bolivia 00591 Bosnia 00387 Botswana 00267 Brazil 0055 Brunei 00673 Bulgaria 00359 Burkina 00226 Burundi 00257 Cambodia 00855 Cameroon 00237 Canada 001 Cape Verde 00238 Cayman Islands 001345 Central African Republic 00236 Chad 00235 Chile 0056 China 0086 Colombia 0057 Comoros 00269 Congo 00242 Cook Islands 00682 Costa Rica 00506 Croatia 00385 Cuba 0053 Cyprus 00357 Cyprus (Northern) 0090392 Czech Republic 00420 Denmark 0045 Diego Garcia 00246 Djibouti 00253 Dominica 001767 Dominican Republic 001809 Ecuador 00593 Egypt 0020 El Salvador 00503 England (UK) 0044 Equatorial Guinea 00240 Eritrea 00291 Estonia 00372 Ethiopia 00251 Falkland Islands 00500 Faroe Islands 00298 Fiji 00679 Finland 00358 France 0033 French Guiana 00594 French Polynesia 00689 Gabon 00241 Gambia 00220 Georgia 00995 Germany 0049 Ghana 00233 Gibraltar 00350 Greece 0030 Greenland 00299 Grenada 001473 Guadeloupe 00590 Guam 001671 Guatemala 00502 Guinea 00224 Guyana 00592 Haiti 00509 Holland (Netherlands)0031 Honduras 00504 Hong Kong 00852 Hungary 0036 Ibiza (Spain) 0034 Iceland 00354 India 0091 Indian Ocean 00873 Indonesia 0062 Iran 0098 Iraq 00964 Ireland 00353 Italy 0039 Ivory Coast 00225 Jamaica 001876 Japan 0081 Jordan 00962 Kazakhstan 007 Kenya 00254 Kiribati 00686

Kuwait 00965 Kyrgyzstan 00996 Laos 00856 Latvia 00371 Lebanon 00961 Liberia 00231 Libya 00218 Lithuania 00370 Luxembourg 00352 Macau 00853 Macedonia 00389 Madagascar 00261 Majorca 0034 Malawi 00265 Malaysia 0060 Maldives 00960 Mali 00223 Malta 00356 Marshall Islands 00692 Martinique 00596 Mauritania 00222 Mauritius 00230 Mayotte 00269 Mexico 0052 Micronesia 00691 Moldova 00373 Monaco 00377 Mongolia 00976 Montserrat 001664 Morocco 00212 Mozambique 00258 Myanmar (Burma) 0095 Namibia 00264 Nepal 00977 Netherlands (Holland)0031 Netherlands Antilles 00599 New Caledonia 00687 New Zealand 0064 Nicaragua 00505 Nigar 00227 Nigeria 00234 Niue 00683 Norfolk Island 00672 Northern Ireland (UK)0044 North Korea 00850 Norway 0047 Oman 00968 Pakistan 0092 Palau 00680 Panama 00507 Papua New Guinea 00675 Paraguay 00595 Peru 0051 Philippines 0063 Poland 0048 Portugal 00351 Puerto Rico 001787 Qatar 00974 Romania 0040 Russian Federation 007 Rwanda 00250 Saint Helena 00290 Saint Kitts 001869 Saint Lucia 001758 Saint Pierre 00508 Saint Vincent 001784 Samoa US 00684 Samoa West 00685 San Marino 00378 Sao Tone 00239 Saudi Arabia 00966 Scotland (UK) 0044 Senegal 00221 Seychelles 00284 Sierra Leone 00232 Singapore 0065 Slovakia 00421 Slovenia 00386 Solomon Islands 00677 Somalia 00252 South Africa 0027 South Korea 0082 Spain 0034 Sri Lanka 0094 Sudan 00249 Suriname 00597 Swaziland 00268 Sweden 0046 Switzerland 0041 Syria 00963 Taiwan 00886 Tanzania 00255 Thailand 0066 Toga 00228 Tonga 00676 Tokelau 00690 Trinidad 001868 Tunisia 00216 Turkey 0090 Tuvalu 00688 Uganda 00256 Ukraine 00380 United Arab Emirates00976

Stars

FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2013

Word Search

Yesterdayʼs Solution

C R O S S W O R D 1 7 1

ACROSS 1. Tag the base runner to get him out.

4. Of or relating to or characteristic of Plato or his philosophy.

12. (music) The pace of music measured by the number of beats occurring in 60 seconds.

15. Relating to or characteristic of or occurring in the air.

16. An official residence provided by a church for its parson or vicar or rector.

17. A statement that deviates from or perverts the truth.

18. An undergarment worn by women to support their breasts.

19. A kind of heavy jacket (`windcheater' is a British term).

20. Port city on southern Honshu on Osaka Bay. 22. A former communist country in eastern Europe and northern Asia.

24. A deceitful and unreliable scoundrel.

26. Heal or recover.

27. A river that rises in central Germany and flows north to join the Elbe River.

30. Electrical conduction through a gas in an applied electric field.

31. A festival featuring African-American culture.

33. Explore and expose misconduct and scandals concerning public figures.

38. A river in north central Switzerland that runs northeast into the Rhine.

40. The middle of the day.

41. English physician (1624-1689).

45. An overwhelming feeling of wonder or admiration.

46. A colorless explosive liquid that is volatile and poisonous and foul-smelling.

47. The 11th letter of the Hebrew alphabet.

49. Strike with disgust or revulsion.

51. Yellow-fever mosquitos.

53. (Zoroastrianism) Title for benevolent deities.

55. The lean flesh of a fish similar to cod.

56. According to the Old Testament he was a pagan king of Israel and husband of Jezebel (9th century BC).

58. Cause to move back by force or influence.

60. A highly unstable radioactive element (the heaviest of the halogen series).

61. Tropical American trees.

64. Covered with beads of liquid.

66. Planetarium consisting of an apparatus that illustrates the relative positions and motions of bodies in the solar system by rotation and revolution of balls moved by wheelwork.

68. The largest city of Cameroon.

71. Two items of the same kind.

72. Eurasian perennial bulbous herbs.

75. United States naturalist (born in England) who advocated the creation of national parks (1838-1914).

76. Liquid containing proteins and electrolytes including the liquid in blood plasma and interstitial fluid.

79. Someone (especially a woman) who annoys people by constantly finding fault.

80. Any of various long-tailed rodents similar to but larger than a mouse.

81. Minute sedentary marine invertebrate having a saclike body with siphons through which water enters and leaves.

82. To an excessive degree.

DOWN 1. (Babylonian) God of wisdom and agriculture and patron of scribes and schools.

2. Affected manners intended to impress others.

Daily SuDoku

3. Armor plate that protects the arm.

4. A vinyl polymer used especially in paints or adhesives.

5. United States sculptor and architect whose public works include the memorial to veterans of the Vietnam War in Washington (born in 1959).

6. Absence of the pupil in an eye.

7. Edible starchy tuberous root of taro plants.

8. The Japanese art of folding paper into shapes representing objects (e.g., flowers or birds).

9. A city in western Kenya.

10. A class of proteins produced in lymph tissue in vertebrates and that function as antibodies in the immune response.

11. The corporate executive responsible for the operations of the firm.

12. (Scottish) Bluish-black or gray-blue.

13. Small short-eared burrowing mammal of rocky uplands of Asia and western North America.

14. The food served and eaten at one time.

21. A broken piece of a brittle artifact.

23. (the feminine of raja) A Hindu princess or the wife of a raja.

25. Electronic warfare undertaken to insure effective friendly use of the electromagnetic spectrum in spite of the enemy's use of electronic warfare.

28. The azimuth of a celestial body is the angle between the vertical plane containing it and the plane of the meridian.

29. The cardinal number that is the fifth power of ten.

32. United States film actor who played tough heroes (1907-1979).

34. The basic unit of money in Papua New Guinea.

35. (Babylonian) A demigod or first man.

36. New Zealand timber tree resembling the cypress.

37. A small hole (usually round and finished around the edges) in cloth or leather for the passage of a cord.

39. A woman hired to suckle a child of someone else.

42. Someone who eats lightly or eats snacks between meals.

43. Jordan's port.

44. Being one more than two.

48. Having greatly reduced vision.

50. Grasses native to temperate regions.

52. Worn or shabby from overuse or (of pages) from having corners turned down.

54. The great hall in ancient Persian palaces.

57. Midwife toads.

59. The capital and largest city of Japan.

62. Annual to perennial herbs of the Mediterranean region.

63. A document ordering the payment of money.

65. Cause to lose courage.

67. Being two more than forty.

69. The dynasty that ruled much of Manchuria and northeastern China from 947 to 1125.

70. Formerly a large constellation in the southern hemisphere between Canis Major and the Southern Cross.

73. Greenwich Mean Time updated with leap seconds.

74. United States architect (born in China in 1917).

77. An intensely radioactive metallic element that occurs in minute amounts in uranium ores.

78. Half the width of an em.

Yesterdayʼs Solution

Yesterday’s Solution

42

Sports FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2013

Mayweather vows jail, ring rust will not weaken him LAS VEGAS: Unbeaten American boxing star Floyd Mayweather says neither jail time nor ring rust from a one-year layoff will diminish him next week when he returns against compatriot Robert Guerrero.

“Of course I feel unbeatable. I’m in the sport where I’m the best,” Mayweather said in a Wednesday teleconference call. “I’m not going into the fight thinking I’m beatable.” Mayweather, 43-0 with 26 knockouts, will defend his World Boxing Council welterweight title against southpaw Guerrero, 31-1 with 18 knockouts, on May 4 at Las Vegas, a year after beating Miguel Cotto by unanimous decision.

It will be Mayweather’s first fight since serving two months in jail for domestic battery, a fact that gives challenger Guerrero a confidence boost. “Most definitely Floyd Mayweather is taking me seriously,” Guerrero said. “It has been his longest training camp in a long time. Being a whole

year’s layoff, he’s going to feel the punches.

We’re going after him the whole fight.

“It’s going to take a little time to shake that ring rust off.” Mayweather, 36, says he is as fit as he has ever been and ready to face whatever challenge Guerrero brings.

“If that’s his way to psyche himself out and build confidence, more power to him,” Mayweather said. “I’m in tip top condition.

I’m in great shape. I have been working hard.”

As for jail time, Mayweather would not say his stay behind bars changed him. “It was just an obstacle that was in my way,” he said. “I’m happy to be home. There’s nothing cool about losing your freedom.

Freedom is extremely important.”

Mayweather, who will launch a six-fight deal over 30 months with the Guerrero matchup, has fought only four times since December of 2007 and says resting his body for peak performance is far from losing fight fitness.

“I took a long time off before. I just call it a vacation,” Mayweather said. “Sometimes the body needs time to heal. The body needs time to rejuvenate. The body needs time to rest.”

Mayweather hinted at retirement after completing his latest fight deal, although an perfect run would leave him on the brink of a 50-fight win streak, and said he would wait and see how he fared in the ring over the span.

“I only have 30 months left,” Mayweather said. “After this fight I’ve got five more fights. That’s all I have got to do, finish putting those stamps on my legacy. I just want to stay active, go out there and keep the fans happy.

“I don’t know yet (if I will retire). I don’t know. By 30 months, I’ll be pretty close to 40. It might be time to get out of the sport.

We have to see how these next six fights play out.

“I want to stay active. The busier I am

Valdespin slams Dodgers in 10th, Mets win 7-3 NEW YORK: Jordany Valdespin began the night on the bench and ended it partying at home plate. A late-inning substitute, Valdespin hit a grand slam in the 10th as the New York Mets rallied past the Los Angeles Dodgers 7-3 Wednesday to save early sensation Matt Harvey from his first loss of the season.

“Coming back and winning a game like that, that’s huge for us as we move forward,” manager Terry Collins said. Matt Kemp hit his first homer of the year and drove in three runs as Los Angeles grabbed a 3-1 lead against

Wright, however, lined the next pitch to rightcenter for his first hit of the night. “Definitely a tough one,” League said. John Buck led off the 10th with a single against Josh Wall (0-1), and Ike Davis walked on four pitches. Both runners moved up on Marlon Byrd’s sacrifice, and Lucas Duda was intentionally walked to load the bases.

In the dugout, Harvey was encouraging Valdespin. “I told him they’re going to walk Duda and you’re going to win this game,” the pitcher said. “He was sitting there nice and

DETROIT: Alex Avilia No 13 of the Detroit Tigers gets ready to tag out Chris Getz No 17 of the Kansas City Royals at the plate during the fourth inning of the game at Comerica Park yesterday in Detroit, Michigan. — AFP Harvey. The budding Mets ace pitched pretty well, though, and was bailed out when his teammates came back.

David Wright tied the game with a twoout single in the ninth off closer Brandon League, handed his first blown save in a Dodgers uniform. Pinch-hitter Mike Baxter hustled for a leadoff double when his sinking liner to left glanced off the wrist of a sliding Carl Crawford. Baxter advanced on Ruben Tejada’s sacrifice, and League had a chance to get out of it after third baseman Jerry Hairston Jr. crashed into the railing to make a spectacular catch on Daniel Murphy’s foul popup.

loose, then he walked up there and delivered.”

With the Dodgers playing five infielders and two shallow outfielders, Valdespin drove a 2-1 pitch to right for his first career slam and game-ending RBI. “I’m not thinking about the infielders. I want to hit a good pitch,” Valdespin said. “I’m ahead, it’s time to be aggressive and hit the ball.”

Valdespin, who grounded out as a pinch hitter with a chance to tie it in the eighth, tossed his helmet high in the air and hopped on home plate into the arms of excited teammates. “He gets pumped up for that stuff,” Collins said. “He just relishes that big moment

during the game.”

The Mets said it was the sixth walk-off grand slam in club history and their first since Kevin McReynolds connected on June 25, 1991, against Montreal, according to research by the Elias Sports Bureau.

Bobby Parnell (1-0) worked around a leadoff walk in the 10th. Kemp’s two-run shot off Harvey in the sixth, originally ruled a triple before a replay review, snapped a 1-all tie and ended the slugger’s drought of 86 at-bats dating to last season.

Ted Lilly tossed five effective innings in his first start since shoulder surgery, giving the Dodgers’ injury-depleted rotation a boost. Los Angeles had won five in a row at Citi Field.

The 37-year-old Lilly allowed one run and struck out seven, wriggling out of two jams in his first big league outing since last May. The two-time All-Star opened 5-1 last season before he was sidelined by a left shoulder injury that required surgery in September.

“First time out, pretty good. Yeah, really good. I thought he was sharp,” Dodgers manager Don Mattingly said. “That’s what Teddy does right there.” Harvey, who beat Washington phenom Stephen Strasburg last Friday, entered with a 0.93 ERA. He fanned seven in six innings against the Dodgers but failed in his bid to become the first five-game winner in the majors. The Mets said he was the first pitcher since 1900 to win his first four starts in a season while allowing no more than 10 total hits, according to research by the Elias Sports Bureau. Three days later, Tampa Bay left-hander Matt Moore matched that feat.

Hoping to cash in on Harvey’s success, the Mets offered a special ticket promotion that included Harvey T-shirts. A crowd of 24,130 showed up on a windy night in Queens to watch the 24-year-old right-hander make his 15th major league start. “I don’t get caught up in the marketing stuff too much,” Collins said before the game. “When you’re around this guy, he’s not caught up in that, either.” Harvey was cruising until he walked Adrian Gonzalez on a full-count pitch with two outs in the sixth.

Kemp drove a 2-0 fastball, clocked at 95 mph, toward the right-field corner where a security guard stationed at the foul pole tried to catch the ball just behind the wall. —AP

the better it is for me.” Mayweather termed Guerrero “flatfooted” and called him “more like a grappler, a wrestler, than a boxer.” “Everybody always says what they are going to do to me. He’s a solid opponent. He talks a good game. Now we have to see if he can fight as well as he talks.”

Mayweather said he was ready for any punishment Guerrero might bring, but ready to adjust his style to cope, saying, “You can’t go to a gunfight and basically not think you’re going to get shot. We have to see how the fight goes.”

Mayweather will be trained by his father, Floyd Snr, rather than his uncle Roger because his uncle is ill. Mayweather has a strained relationship with his father.

“My thing is to try to leave all the negative things behind,” Floyd Jnr said. “As far as arguments we had in the past, that’s in the past. We leave it in the past and focus on the future.” —AFP

UCI failed to act after Armstrong scandal PARIS: US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) president Travis Tygart accused the International Cycling Union (UCI) yesterday of failing in its promise to deal with the consequences of the Lance Armstrong scandal.

Speaking before a French Senate investigation committee on doping, Tygart, the man behind Armstrong’s fall, said the governing body had taken no action after the cyclist was banned for life for doping his way to seven Tour de France titles.

“It is unacceptable for the UCI to have accepted our reasoned decision, publicly announced that ‘decisive action was needed’ and simply have done nothing,” Tygart said in a 15-minute speech.

The USADA CEO reminded committee members that the UCI had said that only “a transparent and decisive examination of the past would answer the critics”.

“Well, the only decisive action came a few weeks later when UCI disbanded the established independent commission when it actually started to act independently by taking off the handcuffs and removing the blindfolds that the UCI had placed on it from the onset,” he said.

On Jan. 28, the UCI disbanded the Independent Commission which was investigating the Armstrong affair in favour of a Truth and Reconciliation process-which has yet to start.

“The UCI’s current strategy is to play a stall game, let the cycling season start, let another Tour de France occur, let another six months go by and people will forget,” said Tygart.

“Stall or delay yourself out of the problem.” UCI president Pat McQuaid had described Tyler Hamilton and Floyd Landis, who testified against Armstrong, as “scumbags” after the UCI had ratified the USADA’s decision to strip Armstrong of his seven Tour titles last October.

“It sends a strong and frightening message to others: you’d better not come forward,” Tygart said. It is time for those who love the sport to finally know the whole truth, Tygart added. “But for clean athletes and those who share the Olympic values, now is the time for the truth,” he said.

“We cannot wait any longer if we mean what we say by Olympic values, about clean play, fair play. The UCI must follow through on what they announced: decisive action.”—Reuters

43

Sports FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2013

Australia’s Reds seek Super sweep over Kiwis SYDNEY: The Queensland Reds will strive to extend Australian dominance over New Zealand teams in this season’s Super 15 while the Waikato Chiefs take on the Coastal Sharks in a repeat of last year’s final.

Australia’s Reds, the 2011 champions, host John Kirwan’s Auckland Blues in Brisbane on Friday looking to complete a clean sweep over Kiwi opposition, a feat not yet achieved by the team in the professional era.

The Reds have already beaten the Hurricanes, Highlanders and Chiefs this campaign to make it 11 wins from their past 12 games against New Zealand teams. They are not scheduled to face the Canterbury Crusaders in the regular season.

More generally teams from Australia, preparing to welcome the British and Irish Lions in June, have dominated their New Zealand rivals this season, winning seven of the nine trans-Tasman encounters.

The Reds, who are two points behind the ACT Brumbies in the Australian conference, have made two changes from last week’s 19-19 draw with the Canberra team, bringing in hooker Saia Faingaa and prop Ben Daley.

“The Blues are a very talented side and the short six-day turnaround makes things even more complicated for us, so to be able to maintain continuity in our selections is important,” Reds chief coach Ewen McKenzie said.

Kirwan’s team are top of the New Zealand conference and second behind the Brumbies in the overall table. But the All Blacks legend rates the versatile Reds as the best in the competition.

“They have a good kicking game, they’ve got an expansive game, they can play a tight game and they play with real intelligence in mixing that up,” Kirwan said. The Brumbies take on Western Force in an all-Australian encounter in Canberra, knowing an upset defeat could

NHL results/standings Tampa Bay 5, Toronto 2; Detroit 3, Los Angeles 1; Chicago 4, Edmonton 1; Phoenix 2, San Jose 1.

Pittsburgh NY Islanders NY Rangers New Jersey Philadelphia

Eastern Conference Atlantic Division W L OTL GF 35 11 0 155 24 16 6 137 24 18 4 122 18 18 10 109 21 22 3 129

GA 113 135 109 123 139

PTS 70 54 52 46 45

Boston Montreal Toronto Ottawa Buffalo

Northeast Division 27 13 5 125 27 14 5 141 25 16 5 140 23 16 6 109 20 21 6 123

102 123 129 99 142

59 59 55 52 46

Washington Winnipeg Carolina Tampa Bay Florida

Southeast Division 26 18 2 145 24 20 3 126 19 24 3 122 18 24 4 145 14 26 6 107

126 140 148 143 164

54 51 41 40 34

Chicago St. Louis Detroit Columbus Nashville

Western Conference Central Division 35 6 5 151 27 17 2 122 22 16 8 116 22 17 7 114 16 21 9 108

98 113 113 117 131

75 56 52 51 41

Vancouver Minnesota Calgary Edmonton Colorado

Northwest Division 26 13 7 124 25 18 3 118 19 23 4 126 17 22 7 112 15 24 7 110

111 120 153 131 145

59 53 42 41 37

Pacific Division Anaheim 29 11 6 134 112 64 Los Angeles 26 16 5 130 116 57 San Jose 25 15 7 122 113 57 Dallas 22 20 4 129 136 48 Phoenix 20 18 8 116 123 48 Note: Overtime losses (OTL) are worth one point in the standings and are not included in the loss column (L)

knock them off the top of the overall table.

Loosehead prop Scott Sio is their only change from last week.

“As always with local derbies, we expect Saturday’s match to be full of feeling and a tough contest right to the final siren,” head coach Jake White said. Meanwhile the defending champions, the Chiefs, have made wholesale changes with nine different faces in their team to face South Africa’s Sharks, following back-to-back losses to the Reds and NSW Waratahs.

The Sharks, who relinquished the South African conference lead to the Northern Bulls after going down to the Central Cheetahs last week, have lost centre Paul Jordaan for the rest of the season with a knee injury.

The Durban-based side have been forced to call in a number of loan players for the game in Hamilton, where they can gain a measure of revenge for losing last year’s final. Elsewhere,

Bulls coach Frans Ludeke is looking for a bonuspoint win against the Waratahs in Pretoria on Saturday as they seek to extend their narrow, one-point lead in the South African conference.

“Obviously every point you can get is vital, but you have to do the hard yards first and it is all about getting control in a game,” Ludeke said.

Ludeke has made four changes from last week’s 34-0 win against the Southern Kings, with loosehead prop Dean Greyling making his first start of the season after recovering from a stress fracture in his foot.

Cheetahs coach Naka Drotske has left his run-on team intact for Saturday’s South African derby against the Kings in Bloemfontein.

In this weekend’s other games, the Hurricanes host South Africa’s Western Stormers in Palmerston North and the Crusaders play the Melbourne Rebels in Christchurch on Sunday. —AFP

Blackhawks beat Oilers, secure Presidents’ Trophy EDMONTON: The Chicago Blackhawks secured the NHL’s Presidents’ Trophy awarded to the team with the best regularseason record - for the first time in 22 years with a 4-1 victory over the Edmonton Oilers on Wednesday.

Patrick Kane had a goal and two assists for the Blackhawks, who held off the Eastern Conference-leading Pittsburgh Penguins for the best record.

In the other key result, the Detroit Red Wings beat the Los Angeles Kings to move into the playoff placings in the Western Conference. Chicago’s Jonathan Toews, Patrick Sharp and Johnny Oduya also scored for the Blackhawks, who lost goaltender Ray Emery to a lower-body injury in the first period. Nail Yakupov scored for the Oilers, who lost for the ninth time in 10 games.

RED WINGS 3, KINGS 1 Jordin Tootoo netted the go-ahead goal early in the third period, and Johan Franzen scored on a power play with 6:26 left, lifting the Detroit Red Wings to a 3-1 win Wednesday night over the Los Angeles Kings and into eighth place in the Western Conference.

Detroit is one point ahead of Columbus and one behind seventh-place Minnesota.

All three teams have two games remaining. The Red Wings are aiming to extend their postseason streak to 22, the longest in North American professional sports.

Detroit’s Jimmy Howard made 23 saves, and Pavel Datsyuk scored a gametying goal midway through the second period.

Kyle Clifford scored the lone goal for the defending Stanley Cup champion Kings, who are trying to finish fourth to earn home-ice advantage in the first round of the playoffs. Jonathan Quick made 33 saves, including 13 in the first period when the Kings recorded only four shots on Howard.

LIGHTNING 5, MAPLE LEAFS 2 Martin St. Louis scored three goals and Tampa Bay snapped a six-game losing streak with a victory over Toronto.

St. Louis, who has 16 goals this season,

took over the lead in the NHL scoring race with 58 points - two more than teammate Steven Stamkos and injured Pittsburgh Penguins forward Sidney Crosby.

Stamkos scored his 29th goal, two behind NHL-leading Alex Ovechkin of Washington, and added an assist. Radko Gudas gave the Lightning a 3-2 lead in the third period.

With 55 points, Toronto is one point ahead of the New York Islanders for fifth place in the Eastern Conference. Both

COYOTES 2, SHARKS 1 Mike Smith stopped 33 shots, and Phoenix prevented San Jose from moving up in the Western Conference standings.

The Sharks had a chance to pass Los Angeles for fourth in the West, but the Coyotes played more like the team still in the playoff hunt. Phoenix beat Thomas Greiss for two goals in the first period and played the tight-checking style that had been so successful the previous three seasons. That left the Sharks tied with the Kings

EDMONTON: Ryan Smyth No 94 of the Edmonton Oilers deflects a puck in to the pads of goaltender Cory Crawford No 50 of the Chicago Blackhawks at Rexall Place on Wednesday in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. —AFP teams, who have already clinched playoff berths, have two games remaining.

Toronto took a 1-0 lead with 2:57 remaining in the first period when Phil Kessel pushed a wrist shot past goalie Ben Bishop. Joffrey Lupul scored with 24 seconds remaining in the second to get the Maple Leafs even at 2.

at 57 points. Michael Stone and Keith Yandle both scored, and Shane Doan had a pair of assists for Phoenix.

Brent Burns scored and Greiss stopped 30 shots in his first start since March 6 for the Sharks, who will close the season against the defending Stanley Cup champion Kings in Los Angeles on Saturday. —Agencies

Sports FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2013

Doping scandal casts cloud over Godolphin DUBAI: Boasting grandstands that can seat 60,000 spectators, the $2 million Meydan Racecourse has become symbolic of the grand ambitions of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum.

The Ruler of Dubai defied critics and cynics to open the track in 2009 during the height of the global financial crisis and each year it hosts the $10 million Dubai World Cup, the world’s richest horse race. The track has also been integral to Sheikh Mohammed’s ceaseless efforts to promote Dubai and, to a lesser degree, his Godolphin stables.

But now Sheikh Mohammed’s racing empire faces a crisis, with news that a top Godolphin trainer was charged in connection with one of the biggest doping scandals to hit British horse racing. Mahmood al-Zarooni was charged with violating multiple rules related to banned substances after samples from 11 of his horses at stables in Newmarket, England - including 1000 Guineas favorite Certify - were found to contain traces of anabolic steroids.

Sheikh Mohammed has said he was “appalled and angered” to learn about the allegations. It is inevitable that Godolphin, as the trainer’s employer, will have suffered damage to its reputation,” Rupert Arnold, chief executive of the National Trainers Federation, said in an email to The Associated Press. “A more accurate picture will emerge from the evidence given at tomorrow’s hearing.

Sheikh Mohammed’s anger is understandable. He is the face of Godolphin and this scandal threatens to undo all the work has done in building one of the world’s biggest stables and using it to showcase Dubai - a city of glistening skyscrapers that has emerged from the desert.

Godolphin has had enormous success, with its horses

LONDON: Godolphin trainer Mahmood al-Zarooni arrives for a disciplinary hearing at the British Horseracing Authority (BHA) in London yesterday.

Zarooni has been charged with doping violations after 11 of his horses were found to have traces of banned anabolic steroids, the BHA said. — AFP winning in 12 different countries and earning more than $1 billion prize in money in the past five years. Al-Zarooni, who became a Godolphin trainer in 2010, trained the 2012 Dubai World Cup winner Monterosso. “In terms of size it is a very important constituent, not only to the UK but in the rest of the world,” said Alastair Donald, managing director of the UK-based International Racing Bureau. “It is massive in terms of its success. The number of graded stakes, which are important races, they have 200 Grade 1 winners which is more than anyone else.” — AP

Indian rookie beats idol Hidayat at his own game NEW DELHI: Indian rookie H.S. Prannoy fulfilled a longcherished dream yesterday, playing childhood idol Taufik Hidayat and beating him by frequently unleashing effective backhand strokes he modelled on the retiring Indonesian stalwart.

Former world and Olympic champion Hidayat, 31, will hang up is racket in June and he clearly struggled against an Indian 11 years younger as the Indonesian went down 26-24, 21-9 in the round of 16 at the India Open super series tournament.

Prannoy looked dazed after wrapping up the victory in 40 minutes to reach the quarter-finals where the Indian is set to face world number one Lee Chong Wei of Malaysia. “It was a dream to play him. More than winning, I was thinking more about coming and playing him here,” said the Indian wiping a bead of sweat from his brow before paying rich tribute to the versatile Indonesian. “He’s a very fancy player. We get to see so many fancy strokes from him. “Obviously in childhood days, everybody wants to imitate their idols. I did it so many times. I’m a professional player now and I have my own strokes. But if you notice, I have a strong backhand and I learnt it from watching him, the basic technique of hitting a backhand,” said the Indian.

Hidayat did not, however, linger to confirm the similarity and immediately left the court. A bigger challenge awaits Prannoy in the next round and the Indian said it was just the kind of exposure he was looking for.

“It’s a dream tournament for me, playing Taufik and Lee Chong Wei back-to-back. I’ll do my best.” — Reuters

Parker leads Spurs to 102-91 win over Lakers SAN ANTONIO: Tony Parker had 28 points and seven assists and the San Antonio Spurs beat the Los Angeles Lakers 102-91 on Wednesday night to take a 2-0 lead in their Western Conference firstround playoff series.

Tim Duncan and Kawhi Leonard had 16 points each, Manu Ginobili added 13 points and Matt Bonner had 10 for San Antonio. Dwight Howard and Steve Blake had 16 points each to lead Los Angeles.

Metta World Peace and Pau Gasol added 13 points each, but no other player had more than nine as the Lakers shot 45 percent from the field. Game 3 is Friday night in Los Angeles. Los Angeles said a key to winning was shooting better, and they did - but so did San Antonio.

The Spurs shot 51 percent from the field after shooting 38 percent in Game 1. San Antonio was 7 for 14 on 3-pointers, including 5 for 7 in the first half.

Parker had 15 points in the third quarter after going 1 for 6 in the first half. He scored 12 straight points on a series of layups and floating jumpers against Steve Blake. Parker’s run gave the Spurs a 75-65 lead with 3 minutes left in the third.

The Lakers shot 37 percent (9 for 24) in the first quarter, a slight improvement over their 7-for-20 performance (35 percent) in the opening quarter of Game 1. Gasol posted early, tipping in a miss by

Howard for the game’s opening basket and missing a 5-footer before Duncan blocked his 5-foot hook. The Lakers went to the perimeter following the block, resulting in consecutive 3s by Blake and World Peace for an 8-6 lead with 8:23 left in the first quarter.

Ginobili once again energized the Spurs, sparking runs of 13-4 and 103 to close the first and second quarters. He had 12 points in the first half and was 3 for 4 on 3-pointers.

He had six points with two assists and a block in 6 minutes to bridge the first and second quarters.

Ginobili hit two 3s in the final minute of the second quarter, including one off his initial pass that bounced off DeJuan Blair’s head but eventually found its way back to him. He also fed a streaking Leonard for a dunk off a turnover.

In the first quarter, Ginobili hit a step-back 3 and then drew the defense and fed Gary Neal for an open 3, which he made to give the Spurs a 28-23 lead at the close of the first quarter. The Lakers went on a 9-2 run to close within 33-32 with 8 minutes left in the first half.

Nash opened and closed the run with jumpers. Bonner’s 3 on an open look drew a cry of frustration from Gasol, who shouted at the bench and pointed at Bonner over an apparent missed assignment.

Howard had heated battles with Bonner and Duncan in the first half.

After getting tied up midway

through the second quarter, Duncan and Howard walked down the court glaring at each other with Howard jawing at Duncan. Howard was later grabbed from behind by Bonner and his arm was pulled by Ginobili, but the Lakers All-Star still managed to bank in a layup, flexing his muscles after the shot. Howard even made the ensuing free throw, giving the Lakers a 44-43 lead with 3 minutes left in the first half.

THUNDER 105, ROCLETS 102 Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook both scored 29 points as Oklahoma City recovered after squandering a 15-point lead in the fourth quarter to take a 2-0 series lead. Durant hit the go-ahead 3pointer with 2:28 to play, and the Thunder didn’t relinquish the lead after that. Durant missed a free throw with 1 second left, but Houston was out of timeouts and Carlos Delfino couldn’t connect on a desperation shot at the final buzzer. James Harden scored 36 points and spearheaded a 21-2 comeback that wiped out the big deficit and put the Rockets up 9591. But the top-seeded Thunder were able to respond and protect the home-court advantage they’d spent all season earning. Game 3 is Saturday night in Houston.

The Thunder’s big lead melted away with nine straight empty possessions as the Rockets mixed in a zone defense. Oklahoma City came

OKLAHOMA: Houston Rockets center Omer Asik (3) dunks in front of Oklahoma City Thunder guard Russell Westbrook (0) in the fourth quarter of Game 2 of their first-round NBA basketball playoff series in Oklahoma City, Wednesday. Oklahoma City won 105-102. — AP back to tie it before Harden knifed to the basket for a layup to give Houston its last lead, 97-95 with 2:42 to play. Durant answered right away with a deep 3 from the left wing, and the Thunder came up with back-to-back stops before Thabo Sefolosha’s 3 provided a little breathing room at 101-97.

PACERS 113, HAWKS 98 Paul George followed his tripledouble by scoring a playoff career-

high 27 points to lead Indiana to a 20 series lead. The Pacers have won four straight home games over the Hawks. It’s the first time Indiana has held a 2-0 series lead since the 2004 Eastern Conference semifinals.

George, playing in his first game since being named the league’s Most Improved Player, was 11 of 21 from the field, had eight rebounds, three assists and four steals and again played well defensively. George Hill had 22 points. —Agencies

45

Sports FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2013

Senior batsmen lead Bangladesh recovery

HARARE: Zimbabwe bowler Shingirai Masakadza (L) in action during the first day of the 2nd test match between Zimbabwe and Bangladesh yesterday at the Harare Sports Club, Zimbabwe. —AFP

SCOREBOARD HARARE: Scoreboard at the close of play on the first day of the second Test between Zimbabwe and Bangladesh yesterday: Ashraful), 3-102 Bangladesh first innings (Tamim Iqbal), 4-125 (Mominul Haque), 5-248 (Shakib Tamim Iqbal run out 49 Al Hasan), 6-280 (Mushfiqur Rahim).

Jahurul Islam c Waller b Meth 24 Still to bat: Sohag Gazi, Sajidul Islam, Robiul Islam.

M. Ashraful c Cremer b S. Masakadza 4 Bowling: Jarvis 18-3-85-1; Meth 16-7-22-1; S. Mominul Haque c S. Masakadza b Chigumbura 23 Masakadza 17-2-52-1; Chigumbura 18-4-59-2; Cremer Shakib Al Hasan c Mutumbami b Chigumbura 81 19-2-73-0.

Mushfiqur Rahim lbw b Jarvis 60 Zimbabwe: Brendan Taylor (capt), Vusi Sibanda, Regis Nasir Hossain not out 37 Chakabva, Hamilton Masakadza, Malcolm Waller, Ziaur Rahman not out 8 Richmond Mutumbami, Elton Chigumbura, Graeme Extras (2b, 7lb, 1wd 4nb) 14 Cremer, Keegan Meth, Shingirai Masakadza, Kyle Total (6 wkts, 88 overs, 392 mins) 300 Fall of wickets: 1-44 (Jahurul Islam), 2-58 (Mohammad Jarvis.

HARARE: Shakib Al Hasan and Mushfiqur Rahim restored order to the Bangladesh innings on day one of the second Test against Zimbabwe yesterday, after the touring side had threatened to implode once again.

Former captain Shakib and current captain Mushfiqur put on an unbeaten partnership of 46 for the fifth wicket to take Bangladesh to 300 for six, after the top four batsmen had all gifted their wickets.

Jahurul Islam and Mohammad Ashraful were dismissed in the first session, with Jahurul guilty of an ungainly sliced drive and Ashraful caught at gully after making a mess of an attempted pull shot.

Tamim Iqbal then ran himself out in search of a 50th run, before Mominul Haque chipped a tame catch to mid-off to leave Bangladesh reeling on 125 for four after being put in to bat by Zimbabwe.

However Mushfiqur brought an air of calm to the crease and scored an unbeaten 21, while Tamim took a more aggressive approach on his way to 38 not out.

Bangladesh made four changes to the side that was bowled out for 134 and 147 in the first Test, with all-rounder Ziaur Rahman making his debut and Sajidul Islam playing his first Test in over five years. Tamim and Mominul also came into the side as Rubel Hossain, Shahriar Nafees, Mahmudullah and Enamul Haque Jr dropped out.

Zimbabwe made one change, with Regis Chakabva brought in to open the batting after Timycen Maruma injured his knee in training earlier this week. —AFP

Australia Ashes squad ‘best of a bad lot’ SYDNEY: The recall of two 35-year-old veterans for the Ashes series against England shows the lack of quality coming through the Australian ranks, with the squad the “best of a bad lot”, media said yesterday.

Selectors picked Brad Haddin and Chris Rogers, with five openers among seven specialist batsmen alongside just one spinner, Nathan Lyon, for the five-match series starting in Nottingham on July 10.

Given the sorry state of Australian cricket following an ignominious 4-0 Test series drubbing in India last month, pundits bemoaned the lack of options. “The resurrection of previously discarded veterans Brad Haddin and Chris Rogers for the Ashes has merely confirmed the soft underbelly of Australian cricket,” Sydney Daily Telegraph cricket writer Malcolm Conn said.

“That the selectors were forced back to the future for a 16-man touring party is a poke in the eye of every batsman in state cricket who fancies himself as a future Test player.

“Given that Haddin and one-Test wonder Rogers are both 35, and Ricky Ponting was Sheffield Shield player of the year aged 38, Australia is in danger of losing a generation when it can least afford it.”

The Australian newspaper columnist Patrick Smith said the Ashes squad was the “best of a bad lot”.

“The essential question that needs to be asked is: can we make that Test squad bound for England any better by fiddling with the work of (chairman of selectors) John Inverarity and his mates? The summer gone has us fretting,” Smith wrote.

“If there are no obvious places that need to be overhauled or even fine-tuned, no names chucked overboard, then Inverarity and his panel have settled on a sensible, fair and uncontroversial collection of players charged to bring the Ashes to Australia.

“That doesn’t mean they will come back with anything more than battered limbs and tarnished reputations, rather just that we

have gathered together the best of a bad lot.”

The Sydney Morning Herald’s Chloe Saltau said the squad “inevitably will be derided as the worst Australian outfit to visit England”. “What is beyond dispute is that no Australian team since 1989 has travelled to England surrounded by such low expectations,” she added, referring to the 1989 Allan Border-led team that confounded expectations and thumped England.

Experienced ABC radio commentator Jim Maxwell rated Australia’s chances of winning the Ashes at 50-50. “England’s performance in New Zealand would make you think they are a bit vulnerable, but certainly Australia has to improve massively on its very poor showing in India if it’s to regain the Ashes,” Maxwell said.

“But I will be optimistic and say 50/50 at this distance. Australia has got a lot of good fast bowlers and that is the key to this team doing well - it has tremendous strike power.” —AFP

Fix scandal won’t affect us now, says Pakistan captain KARACHI: Pakistan are a more unified squad and will be unaffected by the 2010 spot-fixing scandal when they return to England in June for the Champions Trophy, according to captain Misbah-ul-Haq. The International Cricket Council banned then-skipper Salman Butt and team mates Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir following the Lord’s test against England after the News of the World tabloid broke the story about spot-fixing in the match.

The trio were also handed jail terms by a London court in 2011 but have now returned to Pakistan after serving their sentences. “I don’t think the scandal will haunt us and we are now mentally prepared to play in England for the first time since the incident,” Misbah told Reuters on Thursday.

“It has been three years since the scandal and the players have made a conscious effort to project a positive image of Pakistan cricket with positive results. There is more discipline and unity in the team.” The 38-year-old said the controversy had damaged the squad’s image around the world. “We see the Champions Trophy as an ideal opportunity to redeem ourselves in the eyes of our supporters in England because there is a big Asian community there,” Misbah added.

He said the players were now given regular anti-corruption briefings while the Pakistan Cricket Board has indicated it will bring in a special vigilance officer for the Champions Trophy to monitor the movements of the squad.

“We have never won this tournament and the way the board is backing us I think we can surprise a lot of people,” said middle-order batsman Misbah. Pakistan have been drawn in Champions Trophy Group B along with South Africa, West Indies and India. Meanwhile, fast-rising Pakistan paceman Junaid Khan said yesterday he was confident that a county stint with Lancashire would help him perform in the June Champions Trophy in England. The 23-year-old left-armer will spearhead Pakistan’s attack in the absence of injured Umar Gul in the eight-nation event to be held June 6-23. Khan said his 2011 Lancashire stint introduced him to the conditions in England. “I played for Lancashire and learnt about the conditions in England which are helpful for swing bowling, so that will surely come good when I play in the Champions Trophy,” Khan told reporters at a tune-up camp for Pakistan pacemen.

Legendary Pakistan paceman Wasim Akram is supervising the 10-day Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) camp for 23 bowlers, some of whom currently play for Pakistan. Khan said tips from Wasim, who introduced him to Lancashire, are a great help.“Learning is a never-ending process and in this camp Wasim told me how to improve my in-swingers and yorkers which are considered as the two best weapons for the left-arm bowler, so I am learning fast,” said Khan.

Khan, who rose after playing first-class cricket in 2007 in the Pakistani garrison town of Abbottabad, said he was also developing aggression under Wasim. “Wasim told us how to show aggression towards a batsman and I am developing that. I was the most aggressive bowler on the tour to India and then South Africa,” said Khan of Pakistan’s last two tours.He said tune-up camps are good for burgeoning talent. “It is a very good initiative from the PCB and chairman Zaka Ashraf has shown interest in helping fast bowlers because Pakistan has always been known for its quality pace bowlers,” said Khan. Wasim praised Khan’s talent. “He has the capacity to spearhead Pakistan’s attack and after noticing his talent I recommended his name to Lancashire,” said Wasim of the county he played for in the 1980s and 90s. —Agencies

Sports FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2013

Balotelli-dependent Milan welcome back striker MILAN: Mario Balotelli is poised to return for AC Milan at the weekend after serving a two-match suspension amid worrying signs his side have become over-dependent on him.

Third-placed Milan, who scored one goal and took only one point during Balotelli’s absence, host Catania on a weekend when Napoli must win at stragglers Pescara to prevent runaway leaders Juventus wrapping up their second successive title. Juve, 11 points clear of Napoli with five games to play, visit Torino and will clinch their 29th Serie A title if they win on Sunday and Napoli draw or lose on Saturday. Even if they do not settle matters this weekend, they will have

another four attempts after that and it seems to be a question of when rather than if they will win the title.

Napoli, meanwhile, look likely to finish second and follow Juventus into the Champions League group stage, but the battle for third, the place in the qualifying round, is far from over.

Milan have seen the gap between themselves and fourth-placed Fiorentina whittled down to one point with Inter a further five points behind in fifth. Fiorentina visit Sampdoria on Sunday. “We need to give gas to our players and our coach to help them qualify for the Champions League for the 11th time in 12 years,” Milan chief executive Adriano Galliani said. “Once

we do that, hopefully we will have a team that is probably integrated and hopefully next season we can fight for the scudetto.”

The question remains over whether Balotelli’s presence helps or hinders the team. The maverick striker has scored an impressive seven goals in eight matches since his arrival from Manchester City at the end of January, while Milan have managed 17 Serie A goals in that period. Only five other players have hit the target since Balotelli’s arrival - Stephan El Shaarawy, Giampaolo Pazzini, Mathieu Flamini, Kevin-Prince Boateng and Riccardo Montolivo. The most worrying drop in form has been El

Shaarawy, third top scorer in Serie A, who netted 15 goals before Balotelli’s arrival and only one since.

Balotelli had largely behaved himself until it all went wrong three weeks ago.

He was caught smoking in a toilet on board the train which took Milan to their match at Fiorentina, then needlessly got booked for failing to retreat at a free kick and earned an automatic one-match suspension for accumulated yellow cards. That ban was extended to three matches after he insulted match officials, though it was later cut back to two on appeal. Milan will have to cross their fingers and hope that weekend was just a blip and that his return galvanises the team again. — Reuters

Barca close on title as Madrid face derby test MADRID: Barcelona can secure their fourth La Liga title in five years tomorrow, but the celebrations are likely to be muted with the club facing a mountain to climb in their Champions League semi-final.

Barca lead second-placed Real Madrid by 13 points with six games left to play, and could move 16 clear with a victory at struggling Athletic Bilbao (1600 GMT).

That would be enough to deliver them the title should Real then lose at third-placed Atletico Madrid (1800). The Catalans, however, will travel back to the Nou Camp with their minds turning to how they might overturn a 4-0 deficit against Bayern Munich four days later.

The top two are likely to field weakened teams in anticipation of demanding European second legs next week.

Jose Mourinho’s side have publicly given up on the league to focus on Europe and need to recover from a 4-1 drubbing at Borussia Dortmund.

Only a Barca win and a Real defeat can deliver coach Tito Vilanova’s first league title as Madrid hold a superior head-to-head record. Barca take on a Bilbao side lying 14th in the standings and in danger of slipping into the relegation battle, while on paper Real have a much-more demanding fixture at the Calderon.

Atletico have a chance to end almost 14 years of derby pain and to move above their distracted neighbours with a victory, and coach Diego Simeone has challenged his side to seize their opportunity. Real are three points ahead of them and hold the edge in head-to-heads should they fin-

ish level, after a 2-0 victory at the Bernabeu earlier in the season. The Madrid derby usually induces pessimism in the red and white half of the Spanish capital with Atletico last managing to beat their city rivals with a 3-1 away win in 1999. They have suffered nine defeats to Real in their last 10 league meetings at the Calderon, but the man who has engineered this year’s impressive campaign is keen to change history.

“You have to go back many years before you find a time when we were competing for league positions as well as for the game,” Argentine Simeone told a news conference on Wednesday. “We have played them in many different circumstances and it hasn’t gone well. Tomorrow is a new opportunity and you have to make the most of it.”

The game also acts as a prelude for the King’s Cup final when the two sides will clash again, this time at the Bernabeu on May 17. Atletico were boosted when striker Diego Costa’s yellow card from last weekend was overturned on appeal on Wednesday, meaning their pugnacious striker is available to play.

Atletico are close to securing a berth in the Champions League group stage, but the battle for the fourth spot, which requires entry through qualifying, is set to run to the end of the season.

Surprise-package Real Sociedad occupy fourth place, 13 points behind Atletico, but two ahead of fifth-placed Valencia who visit Sociedad’s Anoeta stadium on Sunday (1900). — Reuters

BELO HORIZONTE: Chile’s Patricio Rubio, center, fights for the ball with Brazil’s Jean during a friendly soccer match in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, Wednesday. — AP

TORREON: Osmar Mares, right, of Santos Laguna fights for the ball with Gerardo Moreno of Monterrey during the first final match of the CONCACAF Champions league tournament in the city of Torreon, Mexico, Wednesday. — AP

PSG on verge of first Ligue title in 19 years PARIS: Runaway leaders Paris St Germain will move to the brink of their first Ligue 1 title since 1994 if they win at fifth from bottom Evian Thonon Gaillard on Sunday.

Victory for the wealthy Qatari-owned club would keep them at least nine points clear with just four games to play. PSG also have a massive goal-difference advantage over second-placed Olympique Marseille, who travel to Lorient on Saturday, and third-placed Olympique Lyon who host St Etienne on Sunday.

The Ligue 1 crown was the first priority for the owners when they bought the capital club almost two years ago although they also declared an ambition to win the Champions League inside five years.

PSG are already looking to next season with sporting director Leonardo dismissing media reports that he and strike pair Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Ezequiel Lavezzi and midfielder Marco Verratti would be leaving at the end of the campaign. “I never had any intention to leave,” Brazilian Leonardo told the daily newspaper L’Equipe.

“Ibrahimovic will be in Paris next season as will Lavezzi and Verratti.” The fate of coach Carlo Ancelotti seems to be more uncertain. The Italian has said he wants to stay but media reports have linked him with a move to Real Madrid, the club that Jose Mourinho looks like leaving at the end of the season. “We want Carlo to stay but we have to win the league title first. This is our absolute priority. Then it will be up to him to decide, to say whether he wants to continue at PSG or not,” Leonardo added.

While PSG march on at the top of the table, their closest rivals have in mind the fight for a Champions League spot next season. Marseille, second on 61 points, are looking for revenge this weekend after losing 3-0 at home to Lorient earlier this term. — Reuters

Sports FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2013

Real left reeling as European focus found wanting MADRID: Real Madrid’s nightmare in Dortmund comes as a greater surprise than Barcelona’s mauling in Munich, given coach Jose Mourinho has given up on La Liga to focus on the Champions League.

The nine-times European Cup winners were overwhelmed 4-1 by a dynamic Borussia Dortmund in their semi-final first leg on Wednesday, though Cristiano Ronaldo’s away goal gives them a glimmer of hope for the return at the Bernabeu next Tuesday.

Barca’s injury problems and inconsistent form had been more apparent before their 4-0 defeat at Bayern Munich on Tuesday, while Real appeared to have geared all their planning towards their bid for a 10th European crown.

“Extraordinary. In two days the top two in the class have been swept aside,” said the editorial in Madridbased sports daily AS yesterday.

“It almost impressed me more what happened yesterday, because I never remotely considered the possibility of it.” Mourinho has openly conceded defeat in the defence of their La Liga title for months, saying their priority was Europe and the King’s Cup, where they meet Atletico Madrid in the final on May 17.

In recent weeks, he has fielded weakened sides in the league to conserve the energies of an expensively assembled and almost injury-free squad. They trail leaders Barca by 13 points with six games remaining and could see their arch-rivals secure the trophy this Saturday, if the Catalans win at Athletic Bilbao and Real lose the city derby at Atletico.

Captain Sergio Ramos’s pitchside comments at the end of the game, when he said: “We lacked commitment, starting with myself and including the 10 others who were on the pitch,” were also surprising.

Mourinho defended Ramos saying the words came out in the heat of the moment. “I prefer to say they wanted to, but weren’t able to compete,” the former Chelsea and Inter Milan boss told Spanish television, as he admitted they had been outclassed individually and as a team.

Madrid-based sports daily Marca described Real’s display as “lamentable” and said it was “perhaps the worst Madrid of the Mourinho-era since their 5-0 defeat at the Nou Camp (2010)”.

Mourinho was brought to Madrid principally to challenge Barcelona’s hegemony, and over two-and-a-half years he has built a team that can now claim to have the edge over their rivals in head-to-head meetings.

Whether that counter-attacking style against a side who dominate possession is enough to succeed on the European stage is another question, as Real struggled to break down a Dortmund team who used the same quickbreaking tactics against them.

Not only were Real physically overpowered, they were found to be wanting tactically too.

The fact that Real continue to lie second in La Liga behind Barca, both having turned their attentions to Europe of late, raises the question again about the quality of Spain’s domestic competition.

Unlike in other major European leagues there is no collective bargaining for the sale of La Liga television rights, though changes are being pushed through by the Spanish government.

Under the current system, Real and Barca, the world’s richest clubs by income, split around half of the total pot of 650 million euros ($847.73 million) for the league rights between them. Their domestic rivals, many of whom are in dire financial straits, are left to fight over the scraps and find it impossible to compete with the two heavyweights.

It is still early, however, to write off Real’s hopes of making the Champions League final, as they are unbeaten at home in all competitions since January 2012. “Real have an international reputation precisely because of their second-leg performances,” former player and club director Emilio Butragueno told broadcaster Canal Plus.

“If we were able to do it, so can they.” — Reuters

Photo of the day

Felipe Gustavo performs during X-Games Foz do Iguacu in Foz do Iguacu, Brazil .

—www.redbullcontentpool.com

Returning Van Persie could spell trouble for Arsenal LONDON: The irony could be almost too much for Arsenal fans to bear on Sunday with their team expected to form a guard of honour for newly-crowned champions Manchester United. It is a long time since Premier League clashes between the old adversaries in April were often “title deciders” with the only real significance of the outcome of Sunday’s match (1500)being its effect on Arsenal’s chances of finishing in the top four.

Arsenal’s title challenge effectively ended last August when top goalscorer Robin van Persie was sold to United and they replaced him with Frenchman Olivier Giroud who will be suspended for a match his side dare not lose.

Van Persie took his tally to 24 goals on Monday with a hattrick against Aston Villa as United wrapped up a 20th league title and Arsenal fans can only wonder at what might have been had he not left to fulfil his ambitions at Old Trafford.

The Dutchman, who had just one FA Cup winners medal to show for his eight and a half years in north London, scored as Arsenal went down 2-1 at Old Trafford earlier in the season.

After a recent lull, his dazzling display against Villa made him favourite to end the season as the league’s top scorer for a second consecutive campaign. Once the pre-match niceties are over at the Emirates the old animosity that used to accompany these fixtures could re-surface as there remains plenty at stake.

With Manchester City likely to finish runners-up, capital trio Arsenal, Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur are scrapping for the other two Champions League slots. Arsenal are third with 63 points with four games left, a point ahead of Chelsea and two ahead of Tottenham, both of whom have five games left to play. United know that if they win their last four games, which also include a home game against Chelsea, they will set a new Premier League points record of 96.

Chelsea host mid-table Swansea City on Sunday (1400) while Tottenham, reinvigorated after a 3-1 victory over Manchester City last week, travel to relegation battlers Wigan Athletic on Saturday (1400) hoping to exert some pressure on their top-four rivals.

When Arsene Wenger took over as Arsenal manager in 1996 it marked the beginning of rivalry with Manchester United that was as intense as anything else in world soccer.

The personality clash between Wenger and United manager Alex Ferguson fanned the flames and things regularly combusted on the pitch, and off it as was the case when Arsenal’s players hurled pizza at their rivals after one particularly feisty encounter.

From the 1997-98 season, when Wenger’s Arsenal won the title, to United’s triumph in 2002-03, the two sides finished first and second on five occasions. First Chelsea, and now Man City, have replaced Arsenal as the main challengers to Ferguson’s Old Trafford empire, but the sight of Wenger and Ferguson in opposing dugouts is still pure box office for the Premier League.

The return of Van Persie, who is bizarrely omitted from the “50 Greatest Players” section on Arsenal’s website despite scoring 132 goals, will spice up the atmosphere even further.

A home game against Swansea, Michael Laudrup’s eye-catching side who are safe in mid-table, looks like the ideal fixture for Chelsea after their midweek exertions in the Europa League. Wigan have far more at stake, however, as they try and avoid the unusual double of reaching an FA Cup final and being relegated from the top flight in the same season.

Consecutive defeats by Manchester City and West Ham United have left Roberto Martinez’s side third from bottom, three points behind Aston Villa with a game in hand.

The stakes could not be higher as they prepare to face Andre Villas-Boas’s Tottenham.

With a three billion pounds TV deal for the Premier League starting next season, there has never been a worse time to get relegated and a club of Wigan’s modest means could struggle to return to the top flight if they fail to perform their annual Houdini act and avoid the drop.

Likewise, Tottenham fear missing out on the riches of the Champions League again after being denied entry last season despite coming fourth could make it hard to resist advances for their dynamic leading scorer Gareth Bale.—Reuters

FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2013

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